Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Di­rec­tor gen­er­al of the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (CAA) Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al has been named chair­man of the Caribbean Avi­a­tion Safe­ty and Se­cu­ri­ty Over­sight Sys­tem (CAS­SOS). He was unan­i­mous­ly elect­ed at a meet­ing on May 5 in Grena­da. He is al­so the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the CAA and lat­er this year will cel­e­brate an avi­a­tion ca­reer which spans 42 years. In 2009, when CAS­SOS was launched in Guyana by Cari­com, Lutch­me­di­al was elect­ed vice-chair­man. CAS­SOS is the first mul­ti-lat­er­al al­liance of its kind in Caribbean avi­a­tion. Its pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive is to as­sist Caribbean coun­tries to meet their oblig­a­tions on the Con­ven­tion on In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion (Chica­go Con­ven­tion, 1944).

On Thurs­day, CAA chair­man Kim­c­hand Ram­paul host­ed a cock­tail re­cep­tion in Lutch­me­di­al's ho­n­our at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain. Be­fore his col­leagues and close friends Lutch­me­di­al re­count­ed his bare­foot­ed boy­hood days in B al­main next to the Cam­den Air­field. He said: "Liv­ing next to the Cam­den strip is what sparked my in­ter­est in avi­a­tion. "As a young boy I saw aero­planes tak­ing off and land­ing there.

"I al­ways want­ed to be a pi­lot but com­ing from a very poor fam­i­ly, such a dream could not be re­alised."

Lutch­me­di­al is al­so a li­censed air­craft en­gi­neer (UK stan­dard).

Among those who show­ered prais­es on him were In­dus­tri­al Court pres­i­dent Ce­cil Bernard, Ma­jor Gen­er­al Ralph Brown and se­nior man­age­ment of­fi­cials of the CAA who all de­scribed him as "a vi­sion­ary." Lutch­me­di­al said as chair­man he hoped to make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of civ­il avi­a­tion. As di­rec­tor gen­er­al, Lutch­me­di­al spear­head­ed the es­tab­lish­ment of T&T's safe­ty over­sight sys­tem to meet the In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Or­gan­i­sa­tion stan­dards, which re­sult­ed in T&T at­tain­ing Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion Cat­e­go­ry One sta­tus in 2005. He was al­so re­spon­si­ble for the mod­erni­sa­tion of the Pi­ar­co air nav­i­ga­tion in­fra­struc­ture with the con­struc­tion of an ul­tra-mod­ern Civ­il Avi­a­tion Com­plex, a new Area Con­trol Cen­tre, Train­ing Cen­tre and Con­trol Tow­er. That project is near­ing com­ple­tion and is ex­pect­ed to be com­mis­sioned soon. (RKR)