Asha Javeed

The two Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) pi­lots in­volved in Sat­ur­day's run­way mishap at the Ched­di Ja­gan In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port at Timehri in Guyana have been tak­en off the com­pa­ny's ros­ter. Both the pi­lots are still in Guyana and are ex­pect­ed to give state­ments to as­sist the Guyana Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty and the US Na­tion­al Trans­port Safe­ty Board in their in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Di­rec­tor of the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (CAA), Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al said in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day that in in­ci­dents such as these, the air­line would usu­al­ly take the pi­lots off fly­ing du­ties un­til an of­fi­cial re­port is com­plet­ed. He said if the re­port sug­gests a cause of neg­li­gence, then the CAA can sus­pend the pi­lots' li­cences. But un­til a re­port is com­plete, both men will be off the ros­ter. The re­port will al­so serve the air­line in its in­sur­ance claim.

The Guardian un­der­stands the four-year-old air­craft is in­sured by Aon In­ter­na­tion­al for US$48 mil­lion. The claim will be paid to CAL's lessor, Ire­land-based CIT Aero­space. CAL's cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Lau­ra As­b­jornsen said she could not com­ment on the is­sues at this time. "We can­not com­ment on the in­sur­ance is­sues since this all de­pends on the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion," she said.

Mean­while, re­tired BWIA cap­tain Nor­ris Gomez, who didn't want to com­ment on the ac­tu­al ac­ci­dent be­cause of the lack of de­tail, stat­ed: "I first want to say that the cap­tain of the air­craft in­volved in the in­ci­dent is an ex­cel­lent, ex­pe­ri­enced pi­lot. He was my co-pi­lot on the A-340 for years." Gomez said: "I can say, how­ev­er, that pi­lots are un­der ex­treme psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure to land at des­ti­na­tions in or­der to save the air­line great costs due to the ex­pense of putting up peo­ple in ho­tels and resched­ul­ing flights.

"This is not unique to CAL but the pi­lot has to feel that he can make his de­ci­sions with­out fear of re­crim­i­na­tion. "The cur­rent CAL board does not have any­one with fly­ing, en­gi­neer­ing or avi­a­tion ex­pe­ri­ence on it. The board, there­fore, does not have any­one who un­der­stands the pres­sures the pi­lots are un­der. "I think that this would be a good op­por­tu­ni­ty for the pow­ers that be to eval­u­ate the way it struc­tures the boards of na­tion­alised com­pa­nies that re­quire spe­cial­ist in­dus­try knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence." As­b­jornsen said CAL op­er­ates all as­pects of its op­er­a­tions ac­cord­ing to strict reg­u­la­to­ry guide­lines. "These gov­ern flight times and manda­to­ry rest times. As a re­sult we have no com­ment on the quote re­gard­ing our sched­ul­ing of pi­lots," she told the T&T Guardian.