Should the safety of our citizens and visitors to Guyana really be left to chance?

Aug 04, 2011 Letters

Dear Editor,
I read your August 2nd editorial, “CJIA was not to blame for crash”, and I respectfully suggest caution before a rush to judgment.
None of us know certainly who or what was to blame for what happened in the wee hours of Saturday, July 30, 2011 at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA).
The United States’ National Transportation Safety Board will perform a thorough investigation, and when the report is released we will be apprised of its findings, which will hopefully be conclusive.
Even so, however, the incident has put the operations of our international airport under the microscope, and early reports should be deeply troubling. Prior to World Cup Cricket, the Aircraft Owners Association of Guyana (AOAG) commented on the lack of modern air traffic control systems at CJIA, and urged the government to expedite its rehabilitation.
Recommendations were made to the government for the upgrade of navigational aids at CJIA. At that time, the AOAG was told that Minister Robeson Benn was actively seeking the necessary funding for the equipment.
General Manager of Air Services Ltd., Mr. Fazel Khan, reportedly told the media around the same time that the Instrument Landing System (ILS) was not, and had not been, working for years, and that the Non Directional Beacon had also not been working for years.
Two years ago, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) listed Guyana as one of the countries that did not meet minimum air safety standards.
In fairness, Guyana was not alone; other countries in the same category included Bangladesh, Belize, Croatia, Gambia, Ghana, Haiti, Honduras, Kiribati, Nauru, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Philippines and Uruguay.
Furthermore, the strike by air traffic controllers exposed their poor working conditions, and that controllers were being forced to work with unserviceable, obsolete and inadequate equipment.
In August 2009, the CJIA runway was without lights, and flights had to be cancelled. In other incidents lightning caused a complete shutdown of CJIA, and an approaching aircraft almost ran off the runway as a result. That was in 2008.
I mention these incidents because there seem to be a history of systematic neglect of our international airport, and this is no way to run a “modern” airport.
There were complaints made by the AOAG that several navigational aids at Timehri were unserviceable including the ILS, Distance Measuring Equipment (DME) and the Automatic Distance Finder (ADF).
The AOAG complained that the national air traffic control systems for positioning aircraft in Guyana’s airspace, communications for safe in-flight separation, and landing approaches in bad weather or conditions of poor visibility, were seriously lacking.
The concerns and complaints listed above were registered by pilots and aircraft owners in Guyana prior to our hosting the World Cup. It would be useful to hear from Minister Benn how many of those problems were fixed, and, if some were not repaired, why that was the case.
Incidents like the one on Saturday must be seen as a wake-up call, and the Transport Ministry must assure Guyanese taxpayers and the travelling public not only that the deficiencies listed above have been fixed, but that the modernization of the Air Traffic Control system will not take a back seat to some other unnecessary pet project.
That we are still landing jet aircraft at a facility that was built for turbo-prop planes is a story for another day. What we all must now demand of this government is that they no longer take our safety and the safety of the travelling public for granted.
Two weeks ago it was a minibus on Homestretch Avenue. People were killed that time.
This time it was a jet at CJIA … and we were lucky. Should the safety of our citizens and visitors to Guyana really be left to chance?

Mark Archer

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