I was scheduled to travel from the BVI to St. Lucia to speak at a regional event. I arrived at the airport on time, followed every instruction—and still never made the journey.

At check-in, I was told there was an issue with the flight time showing incorrectly in the system. As departure approached, a supervisor explained that while I could be flown as far as Barbados, the connecting flight to St. Lucia had been rescheduled by the airline—making the connection impossible. The next available flight wouldn’t be until December 30, a full week after the event I was scheduled to speak at.

In that moment, one question stood out—and it extends far beyond my own experience:

If this itinerary was never viable, why was it available to book and confirm at all?

This isn’t just about inconvenience. It’s about trust, systems, and the real cost of unreliable regional mobility.

A Growing Imbalance in Caribbean Airlift

Meanwhile, we continue to see announcements celebrating increased airlift and improved connections from the United States into the Caribbean. To be clear, U.S.–Caribbean connectivity is critical—particularly for tourism and economic growth—and sustained investment in those routes matters.

But at the same time, recent news has highlighted regional airlines pulling out of select Caribbean islands, while many of the remaining intra-Caribbean routes operate on extremely limited schedules. The result is an imbalance: international access is expanding, while regional mobility is quietly contracting.

In the current climate, this raises an important and uncomfortable question:
Why aren’t we investing with the same energy in connectivity within our own region?

That question stayed with me following a conversation I had at Caribbean Tourism Organization Caribbean Week in Miami, where I met a professional working in the airlift space. He shared an insight that added another layer to the issue: one of the reasons regional flights remain so expensive is that many regional airlines are not operating fuel-efficient aircraft.

Assuming this is so —higher fuel costs are inevitably passed on to travelers—making short regional journeys disproportionately expensive and increasingly inaccessible for the very people who rely on them most.

Infrastructure Strain and Unintended Consequences

Layered onto this is another reality. In a few jurisdictions, local infrastructure is struggling to keep pace with increased airlift. Airports, ground transportation, utilities, and public services are under strain. In some cases, local businesses—particularly small and community-based ones—are feeling the negative effects rather than the intended economic benefit.

Add limited regional flight options to this mix, and the risk becomes clear. For entrepreneurs, speakers, creatives, students, and professionals traveling for specific events or opportunities, one schedule change can mean missing the purpose of the trip entirely—or being forced to stay away far longer than planned, at real personal and financial cost.

In my case, with no viable alternatives—and the real possibility of being stranded and missing both the event and Christmas at home—I made the only reasonable decision. I didn’t travel.

This Is Bigger Than One Missed Trip

What this experience reinforced is something many Caribbean people already know:
We are not yet functioning as a truly connected region.

Connectivity is not just about tourism arrivals or seat capacity. It’s about how Caribbean people move, collaborate, build businesses, attend conferences, educate themselves, and show up for one another. When regional mobility becomes this fragile—and this costly—it limits our collective progress.

An Open Invitation to the Region

Rather than offering neat solutions to a deeply complex issue, I believe this moment calls for collective thinking.

So I’m asking:

How do we create regional air travel that truly works for Caribbean people—not just visitors?

What would fair, reliable, and affordable intra-Caribbean connectivity look like in practice?

How can airlines, governments, tourism authorities, and infrastructure partners collaborate more intentionally for the common good?

What role should modernization, sustainability, and long-term planning play in the future of regional airlift?

And most importantly—how do we ensure that Caribbean people are not an afterthought in our own region’s mobility story?

A Call to the Conversation

At Caribbean POSH, we believe progress comes from conversation, collaboration, and courageous leadership. This is not about blame—it’s about building something better, together.

We can do better.
And the first step is listening to one another.

If you’ve experienced similar challenges traveling within the region—or if you have ideas worth sharing—your voice matters. Let’s start there.