TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Flying out of Beef island..Cape Air/United

Hi... I am looking at a great return flight cost of 366.00 one way to Chicago on Cape Air / United. flying through SJU. Anyone have any experience with Cape Air? Are they reliable? This is the same cost as a return flight out of STT.
There is a long 3 hour layover in SJU....any comments or suggestions? Stay in the airport of head out for a bit? (One time we went and had lunch at the beach and came back but I forget how long we had for a layover that time)
Nice part about this is I hit Chicago at 6:30 vs flying through STT I get in at 10 pm.

Any comments welcome as I usually fly AA into STT.
Thanks.

I would not leave SJU with a three hour layover..seriously.

Thanks MALCOM... any comment on Cape Air?

Cape Air is great, very reliable. Cessnas. You could need 3 hours in San Juan, probably not, but you need to go through Immigration, Customs, Agriculture, check-in and Security. Don’t go anywhere except duty-free and Margaritaville.

I don't know what it is like going through SJU since the storms, but we have gone through in the past and made it from de-planing to gate in an hour. We have always given ourselves 2-3 hours and had lunch/dinner between flights. We've also always used Cape Air to get to SJU from EIS and they've always been reliable. We often would get to EIS early and they'd get us on an earlier flight as well.

We have global entry, so we breeze through customs, but I've usually felt it hasn't saved us a whole lot of time since it has typically been quite. Our trips have varied throughout various times of the year as well, although the majority have been May-Oct.

We've done the SJU-EIS (Beef Island/Tortola)-SJU route on Cape Air a few times and have been very happy with it. Very reliable and we booked it again for June. One thing to watch for with that route is that they operate a Cessna 402, which is a smaller aircraft and if you check a lot of bags you may run into a weight limitation - meaning, your bags will follow you on another flight (or next scheduled flight). We had this happen to us the first time when we brought a lot of dive gear and learned our lesson. They were great about it and brought our bags to The Moorings base about an hour after we arrived. They also hung in there after Irma and Maria - and I give them a lot of credit for that.

I would not recommend you leave the airport in SJU for the 3 hour layover.

Enjoy your trip!

Great info everyone...Ratman....curious as to why you say not to go anywhere else but Duty free and Margaritaville ~ is this a safety issue?
It indicates that there is a terminal change...is this a big issue? I travel light...one small roller bag so no checked bags.

Also...when flying out of Tortola how much earlier do you arrive for the airport for your flight? I recall someone saying an hour but that seems tight.

Not a safety issue at all. After you clear security (the main one) you will be dumped directly into duty-free. After that, Margaritaville is the only real restaurant choice if you want to sit and kill time. Three hours is not enough to leave the airport, but you are likely to breeze through. SJU operates differently than before the storms due to damage sustained.

Yup...we have three hours to kill next month for our flights down and we will not leave SJU...we are hoping that Intercaribbean will still have a rep at their counter from their earlier flight so we can check in for our flight and go through security.....otherwise.....we are stuck from 11am until around 1pm after we collect our bags from the Jet Blue flight to SJU.

SJU is one of the worst places to have a long layover. Food and drink options are limited and the prices are outrageous. They charge for wireless access and it doesn't work.

Cape Air has its headquarters in Hyannis, MA. It has been servicing Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard & Boston for years and has a great reputation. While they have been in the Caribbean for a number of years I've never had the need to use them as I go to St. Maarten and they don't service that destination. Have never read anything negative about them on this board. Hope this helps.

I left Beef Island on US Air / Cape air today and can report that as usual they were reliable. I only had carry on so it was not a problem making my connecting flight with only about 90 minutes between.

Thanks everyone...I will report back on how it goes!

Previous to Irma I always used the CLT to STT direct flight and worried about the Timing of the Ferry each trip. After Irma AA dropped the direct flight so for my trips post Irma I have started flying through SJU and have been using Intercaribbean and so far it has been great. In SJU the TSA pre check is worth every penny as sometimes the TSA line is long and slow. I think I am correct saying that Intercaribbean has three flights a day to Beef Island. If you can get away with carry on it does make it a much easier go of things. The only thing I don’t like is I miss seeing my favorite taxi man in St Thomas., Stanley

Ken
S/V Imiloa