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Official Report of CAL Crash Investigation could take an entire year – Benn
The official final report on the investigation into the Caribbean Airlines crash that took place a week ago could take up to a year before it is presented.
Minister of Transport and Hydraulics, Robeson Benn, told the National Assembly on Thursday that “it is important that it be understood that investigations of this nature and magnitude usually take up to one year before a final report is forthcoming, in part because of the time it takes to finalise the technical details and in part because of the requirements that the relevant stakeholders be given adequate time to consider the report and to make comments.”
Caribbean Airlines, Flight BW523 which crashed at the CJIA one week ago
The Minister stated that “under Article 24 of the Chicago Convention a state in which an aircraft accident occurs is required to institute an inquiry in certain circumstances and as far as domestic laws permit, to conduct the inquiry in accordance with International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) procedures.”
He went on to point out that in accordance with the statute, the government has commissioned an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the accident. The investigation is being coordinated by the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority.
There are five teams on the ground with specialist personnel from the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), the Caribbean Aviation Safety and Security Oversight System (CASSOS), the Trinidad and Tobago Civil Aviation Authority (TTCAA), the Boeing Aircraft Company, Caribbean Airlines Ltd, the Suriname Civil Aviation Authority and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
The last agency was invited to be a part of the investigation by the GCAA.
The personnel from these agencies are working together in five teams investigating different aspects of the accident, the airplane and the conditions at the time.
The first two teams are investigating airworthiness in order to assess the structure and engines of the aircraft and operations in order to assess pilot and crew activities.
The third and fourth teams are investigating aircraft performance in order to determine whether the aircraft was operating within normal parameters and meteorological in order to assess weather and its effect on aircraft operations.
The final team is investigating survival factors in order to assess the performance of the crew and the physical condition of the relevant parts of the aerodrome.
Benn went on to say that the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder have been recovered and delivered to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) for evaluation and analysis.
And in a comment released yesterday he noted that the engine of the plane has already been removed while the front of the fuselage will be removed during the course of today. Both parts will be air freighted to the NTSB headquarters in the United States for evaluation.
The Minister also complained of lack of “basic and proper investigative journalism” by media personnel whom he accused of sensationalizing descriptions of the prevailing weather conditions, the state of the runway at the time of the accident and the timeliness of emergency personnel.
He attempted to correct the record during his address. According to Benn, reports from the Hydrometeorological Office at Timehri which he said was equipped with a modern Doppler Radar System, there was a light drizzle at the time of the accident, calm winds and no fog.
He also claimed that visibility was at eight kilometers with a cloud ceiling of 9000 feet. He noted that with respect to the state of the runway, the annual audit conducted by the ICAO in January of this year describes the runway as “excellent”.
Benn pointed out that the CJIA runway has a length of some 2270m or 7448ft and is “cambered and grooved” to shed water from rainfall at a rapid rate. He claimed that given the 1.8mm of rainfall which was reported at 30 minutes before the accident and the design of the runway “there was no possibility of standing water on the runway”.
He also said that he was advised “that the runway lighting and the precision approach path indicators necessary for the type of approaches and landings normally executed at the CJIA … are all functioning.”
Benn said that it was of worthy of note that all of the mentioned instrumentation has been used over the last eight years at the CJIA.
During this time Caribbean Airlines had executed over 10,000 landings, handling a total of some 2.1 million passengers without an accident.
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