There is no ques­tion that the Caribbean Air­lines in­ci­dent at Ched­di Ja­gan In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port (CJIA) in Guyana was a stroke of the kind of good for­tune that is quite rare in the air­line in­dus­try. De­spite the star­tling de­struc­tion wrought by the in­ci­dent, it re­mains a mat­ter of di­vine grace that not one of the 163 pas­sen­gers was re­ceived life-threat­en­ing in­juries in what CAL is de­scrib­ing as a "run­way ex­cur­sion." The cir­cum­stances of the land­ing mishap re­quire analy­sis, full dis­clo­sure and if war­rant­ed, ap­pro­pri­ate re­me­di­al ac­tion. The facts that are known about the land­ing so far are these.

At half-past one in the morn­ing on Sat­ur­day, BW523, a Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) flight orig­i­nat­ing in New York and des­tined for Guyana with a stop in Trinidad and To­ba­go, over­shot the 2,200 me­tre run­way at CJIA in Timehri, smashed through the perime­ter fence sur­round­ing the air­field and broke in two across its fuse­lage on the rough ground out­side the air­port. The air­craft came to a halt not far from a 200-foot ravine that would have caused much greater dam­age if the plane had rolled a few me­tres fur­ther. Most of the in­juries sus­tained by pas­sen­gers, of which five were re­port­ed to be se­ri­ous, came dur­ing the emer­gency evac­u­a­tion of the plane in the dark­ness. There has been some spec­u­la­tion about what ac­tu­al­ly hap­pened that night in Guyana as pas­sen­gers re­late what hap­pened af­ter the air­craft touched down and the pi­lot won a cheer and ap­plause for what seemed, briefly, to be a safe and rou­tine land­ing.

In a sto­ry re­lat­ed to Sat­ur­day's Guyana in­ci­dent, yes­ter­day's Wall Street Jour­nal not­ed that run­way is­sues may com­prise up to 45 per­cent of the over­all safe­ty risks fac­ing the glob­al air­line in­dus­try. The in­ci­dent will be thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed by Guyana's Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty, the US Na­tion­al Trans­port Safe­ty Board and the lo­cal civ­il avi­a­tion au­thor­i­ties. CAL has de­ferred any spe­cif­ic com­ment un­til the de­liv­ery of the re­port that will come from these avi­a­tion au­thor­i­ties. Un­doubt­ed­ly, Guyana's Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty will al­so be re­view­ing any po­ten­tial safe­ty is­sues re­lat­ed to its run­way, but it will al­so need to re­vamp its in­ci­dent re­sponse sys­tems in light of the mer­ci­ful­ly non-fa­tal fail­ures that com­pli­cat­ed the evac­u­a­tion of the air­craft. Pas­sen­gers re­lat­ed sto­ries of the prob­lems they faced get­ting out of the plane in the dark­ness and the slow re­sponse of res­cue crews in ar­riv­ing at the plane's lo­ca­tion af­ter it broke apart. One pas­sen­ger told a re­mark­able sto­ry of be­ing charged $20 for a lift to the air­port ter­mi­nal by a pass­ing taxi dri­ver.

One of the bright spots in this en­tire sto­ry has been the vig­or­ous and pro­fes­sion­al re­sponse of Caribbean Air­lines in re­spond­ing to the in­ci­dent, pro­vid­ing sup­port to the af­fect­ed pas­sen­gers and in of­fer­ing any in­for­ma­tion it had avail­able and was able to pro­vide. The air­line's top of­fi­cials were on the spot in Guyana with­in hours of the in­ci­dent and be­fore that they had host­ed a press con­fer­ence at Pi­ar­co Air­port and is­sued a news re­lease. Al­though the cir­cum­stances must have been very try­ing, the air­line went out of its way to en­sure that the pub­lic was in­formed through­out Sat­ur­day, with ad­di­tion­al news re­leas­es and press con­fer­ences. In a show of sol­i­dar­i­ty and em­pa­thy that was out­stand­ing for a state-owned com­pa­ny in a time of near cri­sis, the air­line's chair­man and many of its top man­agers flew to Guyana to pro­vide sup­port for the in­jured and to ad­dress the is­sues that arose.

The fi­nal re­port of the air­line au­thor­i­ties re­spon­si­ble for in­ves­ti­gat­ing Sat­ur­day's run­way ex­cur­sion will no doubt of­fer a more com­plete and in­for­ma­tive analy­sis of the cir­cum­stances that led to the de­struc­tion of BW523 and the lessons that come out of that re­view should lead to re­al world safe­ty im­prove­ments in the re­gion­al air­line in­dus­try post-Timehri. Is­sues with land­ing have be­come such a stand-out is­sue in air­line safe­ty that they have be­come a spe­cif­ic fo­cus of safe­ty groups and in­ter­na­tion­al trans­port reg­u­la­tors. Giv­en the pro-ac­tive way in which the air­line has re­spond­ed thus far, the fly­ing pub­lic should be com­fort­ed in the knowl­edge that CAL will do what is nec­es­sary in the fu­ture to en­sure that its un­blem­ished safe­ty record re­mains in­tact.