Yvonne Ba­boolal

Un­der height­ened se­cu­ri­ty and an ig­nit­ed threat-man­age­ment sys­tem in T&T and Guyana, a Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) flight, re­port­ed­ly tar­get­ed by ter­ror­ists, yes­ter­day flew from the Ched­di Ja­gan In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port (CJIA), Guyana, to the JFK Air­port, New York, with­out mishap.CAL cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Clint Williams told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day af­ter­noon that BW 524, a di­rect flight, left Guyana at 6.05 am and would have al­most reached New York by then. He said the flight was suc­cess­ful.Williams said, ac­cord­ing to re­ports, one spe­cif­ic flight, BW524, was tar­get­ed over two spe­cif­ic days, yes­ter­day and to­day.The two coun­tries' air­ports will con­tin­ue on full se­cu­ri­ty alert again to­day since the same tar­get­ed flight is sched­uled to leave Guyana for New York ear­ly this morn­ing.An­oth­er flight, a stopover, BW662/520, is sched­uled to de­part from Guyana to the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, Trinidad, at 10.30 am to­day and then leave for New York.

The US Em­bassy in Guyana, which re­ceived the threat, ad­vised cit­i­zens there who had sched­uled CAL flights to make al­ter­na­tive trav­el­ling arrange­ments.Williams said there were on­ly 13 can­cel­la­tions in all three flights and claimed that was nor­mal.The ac­tions tak­en by CAL to deal with the sit­u­a­tion earned it the com­men­da­tion of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Capt Gary Grif­fith.He spoke to the T&T Guardian af­ter he held a meet­ing yes­ter­day af­ter­noon with Trans­port Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath, mem­bers of CAL's board and the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty's se­cu­ri­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tions heads.Grif­fith said: "CAL dealt with this mat­ter in an ex­cep­tion­al man­ner. No pas­sen­ger was ever in any re­mote dan­ger."How­ev­er, in keep­ing with their high stan­dard to en­sure the safe­ty of pas­sen­gers, CAL im­me­di­ate­ly ig­nit­ed their stan­dard op­er­a­tion pro­ce­dure for any alarm or mes­sage in re­gards to any flight, whether le­git­i­mate or false."There was no se­cu­ri­ty con­cern and flights con­tin­ue as sched­uled."

Williams said up to yes­ter­day the al­leged ter­ror­ist threat re­mained un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed and was not at­trib­uted to any par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­ual."But we do not wait to in­ves­ti­gate the va­lid­i­ty be­fore pro­to­cols are put in place to re­spond to any po­ten­tial dan­ger."Over the past 24 hours our fo­cus has been on en­sur­ing the safe­ty and com­fort of pas­sen­gers across the net­work, with par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on Guyana," he said.Williams, not­ing the best se­cu­ri­ty pol­i­cy is one that is not ex­plained, dis­closed that the threat-man­age­ment sys­tem was set in mo­tion, in­volv­ing the co-or­di­na­tion of ex­perts across a num­ber of agen­cies.He added: "Law en­force­ment agen­cies from T&T, Guyana and the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty would have re­ceived a brief­ing and put in place pre­scribed se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments."

Williams said that was done with­out the dis­rup­tion of sched­uled flights. "Flights con­tin­ued to fly at the stan­dard sched­ule. There were no re­lat­ed de­lays," he added. The threat-man­age­ment sys­tem is gov­erned by the In­ter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port As­so­ci­a­tion and starts with de­ter­min­ing the strength of the threat.At Pi­ar­co Air­port yes­ter­day morn­ing, there was not the ex­pect­ed hus­tle and bus­tle ex­pect­ed in this Car­ni­val sea­son.Sources point­ed out plain­clothes po­lice of­fi­cers min­gling with pas­sen­gers in the wait­ing area and said: "All of them are here on full alert. The Or­gan­ised Crime and Nar­cotics Unit is up­stairs. They live here."Cus­toms of­fi­cers, dogs from the Ca­nine Unit trained in de­tect­ing bombs are here." He said all flights were be­ing checked.

Pas­sen­gers wait­ing for flights said they had no de­lays and many of them did not know of the ter­ror­ist threat.The US Em­bassy in Guyana did not say what kind of threat it got, re­port­ed­ly via a tele­phone call from Bar­ba­dos, or from whom it may have come.The pub­lic af­fairs unit at the US Em­bassy in T&T said it had no new in­for­ma­tion on the mat­ter.Cadiz said every­thing was go­ing as planned. "We fly­ing," he added.A CJIA state­ment from Guyana said se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies and air­port per­son­nel as­sessed the threat and put in place sev­er­al mea­sures to pre­vent any un­to­ward oc­cur­rence.The height­ened se­cu­ri­ty pos­ture will re­main in place un­til the threat is deemed no longer valid.