“I’m coming home,” sobs a Mahorese traveler, the first commercial flights have arrived in Mayotte

The first commercial flights since Cyclone Chido landed this Wednesday, January 1 at Mayotte airport. A strong emotion gripped the Mahorese travelers as they left, setting foot on their territory, in ruins since December 14. “I am very happy to come back home“, explains a traveler, tears in her eyes and her voice choked with emotion.

“It's a relief, all my family and friends are here. I saw that the ticket prices were high, but that was nothing“, adds a passenger living in Reunion. He knows his program: see his mother, his wife and his relatives, travel around Mayotte to see the damage then go see the state of his fields. “I came for my wife and my father, it was important, urgent, to come here“, adds another traveler.

“From December 14 until yesterday, we had very difficult times“, says a Mahorais who arrived from Paris. “We were a little relieved when we were able to communicate with family and friends, but we had to wait for the airport to reopen.” His flight planned to spend the holidays in Mayotte was canceled, he showed up spontaneously at Charles-de-Gaulle airport in Paris to hope to board. “There were about twenty of us, they walked around for a while and the counter manager told us that a plane was going to leave empty and that we could take it“, he says. “I said yes, that the main thing was that I could get home as quickly as possible.”

If the atmosphere is calm, a long queue has formed to take off from Mayotte. A filtering system has been put in place, only passengers who already have a ticket can enter the terminal. The airlines Air Austral, Corsair and Ewa have already announced their flight schedules for the coming days and their recommendations.