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Thursday, May 22, 2025

Radar system still down nine days after mid-air scare at Piarco

by

Rhondor Dowlat
948 days ago
20221017
The paths of the JetBlue and Caribbean Airlines aircraft near the Piarco International Airport.

The paths of the JetBlue and Caribbean Airlines aircraft near the Piarco International Airport.

FlightRadar

Nine days af­ter a mid-air con­cern be­tween a Jet­Blue Air­ways air­craft and Caribbean Air­lines air­craft that were both ap­proach­ing the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, the Air Traf­fic Con­trol Radar sys­tem re­mains non-func­tion­al.

The Jet­blue pi­lot was forced to take eva­sive ac­tion when he no­ticed that his path was dan­ger­ous­ly ap­proach­ing the cross­ing Caribbean Air­lines plane.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the radar sys­tem went down one month ago and is be­lieved to be the cause of the mid-air con­cern on Oc­to­ber 9.

Speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia, an air traf­fic con­troller said the radar sys­tem is yet to be fixed and was not sure how soon the part need­ed from Italy will ar­rive in the coun­try.

“Since our radar is down there was some sort of mix-up that day (Oc­to­ber 9). It has been down al­most three weeks pri­or and this has been dis­sem­i­nat­ed to all pi­lots,” an Air Con­troller source said.

Asked how is com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­ing done be­tween air­craft and the Tow­er, since the sys­tem went down the air traf­fic con­troller replied: “On the fre­quen­cy, it’s just we can’t see them on a screen.”

Al­so speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia a pi­lot who did not wish to be named said they are all trained to work in a non-radar en­vi­ron­ment.

He fur­ther ex­plained that while the radar is good for “that added se­cu­ri­ty” it is not crit­i­cal for all air men. “We work with fre­quen­cy which we can give our po­si­tion­ing and that would be reached to all the air­craft with­in that range.”

The mat­ter is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty.

When con­tact­ed for a com­ment Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan told Guardian Me­dia to re­fer all ques­tions to the Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al of the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty Fran­cis Reg­is for “the full de­tails.”

How­ev­er, ques­tions sent to the Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al of the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty Fran­cis Reg­is last week on when the radar will be fixed and if the part was lo­cat­ed and pur­chased al­ready went unan­swered up to press time on Mon­day.


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