American investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) have begun interviews with Captain Fareed Dean and other crew members to determine why the Caribbean Airlines Boeing-737-800 aircraft rammed with more than 160 passengers ran off the runway at Guyana's main international airport early Saturday. The eight-person NTSB team, invited by Guyanese authorities to take charge of the probe, arrived in the country late Sunday and immediately went to the crash site at the northern end of the 7,400-feet runway that was built by the US government during World War II. Civil Aviation boss Zulfikar Mohamed said last night that the NTSB team would this week be conducting interviews with the crew to build a profile of what happened "but we don't expect that we will have anything positive to tell people until later in the week."
He spoke as engineers from Seattle-based aircraft manufacturers, Boeing, arrived in Guyana yesterday to inspect the wreckage of the aircraft that broke into two parts once it left the runway and ended up in a grassy area near a dirt road. Other NTSB teams were engaged in meetings with civil aviation and security officials most of yesterday. Topics on the table include plans to remove the entire wreckage from the aerodrome but no final decision has been taken as to exactly when this will be accomplished. Guyanese and Trinidadian authorities had on Sunday publicly differed on what to do with the plane and when to move it, eventually agreeing to leave that decision up to aviation experts.
The most recurring school of thought, however, is for engineers to dismantle its main parts and tow it to a hanger formerly used by defunct state-run Guyana Airways where further investigations will be conducted. The airport, closed for several hours after the worst crash in Guyana's history and one of the most serious for BWIA-Caribbean Airlines, has reopened to normal traffic even as airlines were trying to clear the backlog from delays and cancellations on Saturday.
