Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal was evac­u­at­ed on Sat­urday fol­low­ing a re­port of a bomb scare aboard a Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) flight to To­ba­go.

CAL in a re­lease con­firmed a bomb threat was re­ceived via the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AATT) re­gard­ing flight BW1832 from Trinidad to To­ba­go.

The re­lease stat­ed “In keep­ing with the stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dure the flight was evac­u­at­ed and the rel­e­vant agen­cies are con­duct­ing the nec­es­sary checks. All pas­sen­gers and crew were safe­ly de­planed.”

AATT stat­ed that op­er­a­tions at the air­port were un­af­fect­ed by the CAL bomb threat.

AATT said, “At ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3 pm on De­cem­ber 17, 2022, the Au­thor­i­ty’s Se­cu­ri­ty De­part­ment re­ceived an anony­mous tele­phone call alert­ing of a bomb threat against an air­craft of Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed (CAL) ser­vic­ing the do­mes­tic route.

“As a pre­cau­tion and in keep­ing with well-es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures for such an event CAL and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty were ad­vised and pas­sen­gers in the process of board­ing a To­ba­go-bound air­craft were evac­u­at­ed.”

The AATT stat­ed that as a fur­ther pre­cau­tion, the pas­sen­ger hold­ing area and check-in coun­ters in prox­im­i­ty to CAL air­craft park­ing po­si­tions were evac­u­at­ed and closed as part of the in­ci­dent man­age­ment plan for such a sit­u­a­tion.

The au­thor­i­ty stressed that con­trary to in­for­ma­tion cir­cu­lat­ing on me­dia plat­forms, there was no full-scale evac­u­a­tion at the air­port or any of its ter­mi­nals.

AATT added while sev­er­al air­port users saw it fit to leave the ter­mi­nal, this was not based on any in­struc­tion giv­en by of­fi­cials of the au­thor­i­ty.

AATT said some in­ter­na­tion­al flights were de­layed as a con­se­quence of this in­ci­dent, how­ev­er, op­er­a­tions had con­tin­ued at the in­ter­na­tion­al ter­mi­nal.

The au­thor­i­ty fur­ther as­sured the pub­lic of its com­mit­ment to the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of all air­port users and guar­an­tees that in­ci­dents such as these were man­aged and mit­i­gat­ed in ac­cor­dance with the high­est in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

A re­lease from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice said search­es of bag­gage and ar­eas at the air­port have un­earthed no un­to­ward ac­tiv­i­ties or ex­plo­sives.

"At 2.58 pm on De­cem­ber 17, the TTPS was alert­ed by of­fi­cials of the T&T Air­port Au­thor­i­ty (TTAA) of a threat made via its PBX."

The TTPS said it im­me­di­ate­ly de­ployed first re­spon­ders from the Pi­ar­co Po­lice Sta­tion who aid­ed in the evac­u­a­tion of the ter­mi­nal and sur­round­ing ar­eas, en­sur­ing the safe­ty of trav­ellers and staff. Bomb tech­ni­cians from the Spe­cial Branch and agents of the Ca­nine Branch were al­so de­ployed.