Costa Rica’s General Migration Directorate informed this Saturday that the weather conditions in the United States’ East Coast which caused the cancelation of several flights during the week is now causing heavy aerial traffic in the Juan Santamaria and Daniel Oduber International Airports in Costa Rica, saturating the services and surpassing the airports’ infrastructure capacity.

In January 5th an approximate 70 flights were received in both airports for an approximate 14,000 passengers, while in January 6th between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. 34 incoming flights were received which translates into 6,698 people doing migration control.

“The long lines obey to the heavy aerial traffic and are not related directly to the routine migration control, which is operating at 100% capacity in both airports for the high season. The long lines obey to the high coincidence of flights at specific hours”, stated the press release.

On January 3rd, long lines also affected passengers flying out of Costa Rica due to the new migration system going down for 30 minutes from 12:25 p.m. through 12:55 p.m.; even though the technology failure was just a 30 minute problem, it caused problems for a couple of hours due to the accumulation of passengers waiting in line.

Heavy traffic in the Costa Rica airports is normal this time a year due to the high season, especially during the first weeks of January when many Costa Ricans are returning from their vacation abroad and tourists are traveling to the country escaping the extreme winter in their countries.