St Vincent and the Grenadines / Getting There

Getting to St Vincent and the Grenadines can be a little complicated. There are no direct scheduled flights to the islands from outside the Caribbean, so you will have to make a connection somewhere in the region such as Barbados or St Lucia. It is important to know which airport you are flying to as your eventual destination. Please see under Airport. There is also a good network of ferry services between the islands, particularly those that do not have airport facilities.

The best option to choose for the regional connection (from both sides of the Atlantic), is probably Barbados, from where there are several options, both on scheduled inter-island airlines such as LIAT and on smaller charter airlines, either by private charter or “shared charter”, see below. You might consider flying via Grenada, from where there are local flights to St Vincent itself (though they may not go at the best time of day and even then they actually go via Barbados sometimes anyway), but not usually into the smaller Grenadines. A daily service from SVG Air allows you to travel via St Lucia (Hewanorra) to St Vincent, Bequia, Canouan and Union Island (the latter subject to minimum 4 passengers). Quite a few travellers from France visit the Grenadines and they come via Martinique, from where there are flights down to Canouan and Union Island.

It is useful to know that many of the smarter hotels will arrange your transfer from Barbados, taking you in hand once you arrive there (you will not have to clear Barbados immigration). Or they may collect you on arrival in the Grenadines. For example, Saltwhistle Bay will arrange your transfer to Mayreau once you arrive at Union Island airport. Similarly Petit St Vincent and Palm Island will collect you at the dock at the Anchorage Yacht Club.

Shared charter flights are a hybrid. They fly on such a regular basis that they could almost be labelled scheduled flights, but actually they fly according to need (filling the number of small planes as needed) and they are run by small charter airline companies, so they are regarded as charter flights and do not appear on any international computer systems. The aim of the shared charters is really to meet the international flights from Europe and the States into Barbados and to fly passengers straight on to the Grenadines on the same day, where they drop passengers off as required. With long-haul flights arriving in the mid to late afternoon, it means that you do not have to overnight in the hub island.

Several of the landing strips in the Grenadines have no lights for night-time landing, so companies will do their best to get you there before dark. If your international flight is getting late then their first aim will be to get you through Barbados transit as quickly as possible and on to the onward flight. Sometimes they will simply leave your luggage behind in order to make the hopper flight (this also happens when there is too much baggage to transport). Consequently it is a good idea to take a full set of lightweight clothes and swimming trunks in your carry-on luggage, plus any essentials or vital medication.