Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed (CAL) flights in and out of Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port were tem­porar­i­ly de­layed yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. The air­line said the de­lay stemmed from “man­pow­er con­straints at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice”.

While the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) is­sues dai­ly weath­er fore­casts and cli­mate in­for­ma­tion for the pub­lic, much of the TTMS’ op­er­a­tions fo­cus on avi­a­tion. Twice dai­ly, it pro­duces a low-lev­el sig­nif­i­cant weath­er chart which high­lights ar­eas of po­ten­tial­ly haz­ardous weath­er, a graph­ic with low-lev­el winds up to 24,000 feet and a list of up­dat­ed Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Aero­drome Re­ports (METARs) and Ter­mi­nal Aero­drome Fore­casts (TAFs).

These re­ports and fore­casts are cod­ed mes­sages, in­clud­ing cur­rent weath­er pa­ra­me­ters such as tem­per­a­ture, cloud cov­er­age and bases, vis­i­bil­i­ty, winds, etc, with METARs is­sued at the top of the hour, while TAFs are is­sued every six hours.

Dai­ly, the Met Of­fice al­so is­sued the Aero­nau­ti­cal Fore­cast des­ig­nat­ed for low-fly­ing air­craft be­low 10,000 feet near T&T in the West­ern At­lantic. It in­cludes weath­er and ma­rine in­for­ma­tion for the area, with de­tailed winds from the sur­face to 10,000 feet. All mes­sages and fore­casts are is­sued by the Syn­op­tic Branch/Fore­cast Of­fice of the TTMS and are heav­i­ly used by Air Traf­fic Con­trol and pi­lots for safe op­er­a­tions of flights.

Ac­cord­ing to CAL yes­ter­day in a se­ries of so­cial me­dia posts, none of its flights were able to de­part or land, in­clud­ing BW480 to Fort Laud­erdale, BW484 to George­town, Guyana, BW1513 from Crown Point, To­ba­go, BW1514 to Crown Point, and BW435 from Cas­tries, St Lu­cia.

With­in two hours, CAL ad­vised that its flight op­er­a­tions in­to and out of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port had re­sumed with all rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion re­ceived from the Met Of­fice.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les, the line min­is­ter for the TTMS, who said, “The mat­ter was re­solved,” and “op­er­a­tions are back to nor­mal.”

Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er for the TTMS Camille Hall-Gra­ham said the is­sue stemmed from a lack of tech­ni­cal staff on du­ty, which was rec­ti­fied. Up­on fur­ther in­quiry, she added that a sit­u­a­tion like this has not hap­pened in the his­to­ry of the TTMS, as far as present staff were aware.