Winair launch turns first landing into family reunion

Stand­ing in a cor­ner on the tar­mac of Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, obliv­i­ous to the se­cu­ri­ty and me­dia gath­ered there, an emo­tion­al Karen and Ryan Pin­heiro watched as WM809 touched down just af­ter mid­day on Sun­day.

The Winair ATR 42-500 from Sint Maarten car­ried 45 VIPs, of­fi­cials, and tourists; the start of a twice-week­ly ser­vice be­tween the two is­lands. But for Karen and her hus­band Ryan, it was sim­ply a fam­i­ly re­union. Guid­ing the ATR in­to its fi­nal po­si­tion at Gate 5 were two Trin­bag­o­ni­ans; Cap­tain Michael Awai and the Pin­heiros’ son, First Of­fi­cer Shane.

“I cried, yes, ab­solute­ly! Oh God, I am so proud, you don’t un­der­stand,” Karen told Guardian Me­dia. Though Shane, a Winair pi­lot for the last sev­en years, now lives in Sint Maarten, his moth­er has been his un­of­fi­cial “co-pi­lot” long be­fore that. “I have flown with him be­fore, right here in Pi­ar­co, many years ago, when he was train­ing to get his li­cence. He had me do some stop-and-goes in the night with him, which was a lit­tle daunt­ing be­cause he was on­ly 16 at the time,” she re­called.