Bert Wilkin­son

A pal­pa­ble lack of equip­ment, es­pe­cial­ly mo­bile field lights, ex­posed de­fi­cien­cies in Guyana's re­sponse to the crash of Caribbean Air­lines flight 523 at Ched­di Ja­gan In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, Timehri, Guyana, ear­ly Sat­ur­day, a point that was not missed by avi­a­tion of­fi­cials and hap­less, dis­ori­ent­ed pas­sen­gers scram­bling to ex­it the Boe­ing 737-800 air­craft once it skid­ded off the run­way. The Caribbean Air­lines plane ran off the end of a run­way at Guyana's main air­port and broke in two. About 35 peo­ple had to be treat­ed at a lo­cal hos­pi­tal, in­clud­ing the pi­lot. For more than an hour af­ter the air­craft with 163 pas­sen­gers and crew screeched to a halt af­ter break­ing in­to two parts, res­cue teams in­clud­ing the civ­il avi­a­tion re­sponse sys­tem were grop­ing in to­tal dark­ness, us­ing flash­lights and beams from fire en­gines and oth­er ve­hi­cles to il­lu­mi­nate the dark­ened grass and sandy area where the air­craft fi­nal­ly came to rest on a dirt road.

Po­lice­men with ri­fles guard­ing the plane loaded with pas­sen­gers bags and oth­er valu­ables ex­pressed dis­may at the sit­u­a­tion, some of them say­ing they were ashamed of the poor re­sponse and puz­zled as to why the air­port could not have mo­bilised field light­ing equip­ment to il­lu­mi­nate the area for so long af­ter the plane ran off the pave­ment. Trans­port Min­is­ter Robe­son Benn said ear­ly yes­ter­day that all agen­cies con­cerned were re­view­ing the sit­u­a­tion, but "we have not yet de­cid­ed, agreed on what is need­ed," ac­knowl­edg­ing that a mo­bile light­ing sys­tems would have helped. "We are look­ing at all those is­sues like light­ing and oth­er stuff, but it is not com­plet­ed as yet," he told the Guardian. Civ­il avi­a­tion chief Zul­fikar Mo­hamed said the air­port was now in­stalling a new in­stru­ment land­ing sys­tem (ILS) for pi­lots to re­place an old sys­tem that had not func­tioned for years de­spite re­peat­ed crit­i­cism from pi­lots.

"It is now on test, but if I had a lot of mon­ey I would push for the ex­ten­sion of the run­way by at least 2,500 feet but we are not sure what ex­act­ly caused the ac­ci­dent, whether the run­way was too short or what," Mo­hamed said. Vet­er­an do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al pi­lot Capt Lloyd Mar­shall yes­ter­day cam­paigned for the new in­stru­ment sys­tem to be in­stalled and op­er­at­ing quick­ly, say­ing it guid­ed crews up to with­in 200 feet above the run­way al­low­ing pi­lots to ac­tu­al­ly see where to land. "The sys­tem in place now, the vi­su­al om­ni range (VOR) brings you to about 400 feet above the run­way but in re­al­ly bad weath­er, you might not be able to see the run­way," Mar­shall said, with­hold­ing views on the cause of the crash and leav­ing it to the NTSB. There is al­so a range nav­i­ga­tion­al ap­proach sys­tem. Mar­shall, how­ev­er, said the rel­a­tive­ly low vol­ume of air traf­fic in the area would not sup­port in­vest­ing in a radar sys­tem that was used most­ly to sep­a­rate traf­fic and track air­craft move­ment.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the air­port au­thor­i­ty in Guyana does not have an am­bu­lance ser­vice. The am­bu­lances that raced to the crash site came from George­town, which is 26 miles or an hour's dri­ve away. Mean­while, pas­sen­gers like Philadel­phia-based Guyanese Gee­ta Ram­s­ingh and Pas­tor Michael Nedd both com­plained about hav­ing to grope in the dark and about the in­ad­e­quate light­ing of the scene right on the edge of the aero­drome, but Benn said the en­tire sys­tem was be­ing re­viewed. Mean­while, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Pres­i­dent Bhar­rat Jagdeo of Guyana have dif­fer­ent views on whether the large­ly in­tact tail of the air­craft should be dis­man­tled and re­moved from the edge of the run­way to make de­par­tures safer. Guyana has since Sat­ur­day dis­cussed the need to clear the north­ern end of the run­way, but the T&T Prime Min­is­ter said this would be tan­ta­mount to ev­i­dence tam­per­ing.

"Last night, I in­di­cat­ed to our civ­il avi­a­tion staff and Caribbean Air­lines that the air­craft should not be touched or moved be­cause it is in fact ev­i­dence and we would not want to have any al­le­ga­tions of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of that ev­i­dence," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. "The tail, I have asked for it to re­main, I think it is im­por­tant. "My gut in­stinct tells me, and of course I'm a lawyer, that you do not tam­per with the scene of an event like this. "I've been ad­vised that the in­sur­ers are say­ing it's okay to move it but we don't have that in writ­ing, for ex­am­ple, so it could im­pact up­on that." Like Jagdeo, she said in­ves­ti­ga­tors from the US Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Board (NTSB), who were ex­pect­ed last night, had in­di­cat­ed that the tail could be re­moved, but she want­ed to err on the side of cau­tion. For his part, Jagdeo said: "I gath­er that our per­son in charge of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion has con­tact­ed the NTSB and the NTSB has said it is okay to re­move the tail. "We don't want any­thing ob­struct­ing our air­port be­cause they've had to short­en the run­way be­cause of this ob­struc­tion," he added. From all in­di­ca­tions, the tail will re­main in place.