In Travel News for January 11th, 2023 we talk about the largest grounding of airplanes in 20 years, National Geographic Expeditions itineraries for 2024, and Curaçao.
Curaçao had an Amazing 2022
Curaçao, the small Caribbean island off the coast of Venezuela, set an overnight visitor record in 2022. The county recorded almost 500,000 visitors for the year which exceeded the countries target of 375,000. The increases comes as respected resort companies Sandals and Zoetry, and others opened their doors on the island during 2022. Following the increased interest in Curaçao airlines are starting to take notice. JetBlue Airways will be adding two new weekly departures to the island from New York’s JFK Airport starting in April. If you love the Caribbean and haven’t yet tried Curaçao now is the time.
2024 Itineraries from National Geographic Expeditions
National Geographic Expeditions has recently unveiled their 2024 itineraries for guided Tours and river cruises. Some of the interesting land tours include itineraries in Egypt and India. The company will be offering 27 itineraries under their private expedition series which include tours in Africa, Sicily, and a variety of other places. The Private Expedition Series is designed to take up to 10 travelers in their own party on a unique tour. The river cruises will be operated by AmaWaterways and include sailing the waterways of Belgium and the Netherlands, cruising the Rhine, and a Danube River Cruise exploring the local Christmas markets. Reservations open tomorrow, January 12th.
FAA Grounds all Aircraft
Early this morning flights across the United States were grounded, this is the single largest grounding of air planes since September, 11, 2001. The grounding was caused by a catastrophic cascading failure in the Notice to Air Missions System, this system alerts pilots about conditions that could affect the safety of their flights and is a separate system from air traffic control. Around 9:30am eastern time the system was restored and flights started to resume. A nation wide grounding of aircraft will have a ripple effect for a few days at least, as airlines across the country work to alleviate the backlog of flights. if you are planning on flying this week do keep an eye on your flight status.