The po­ten­tial of the lo­cal avi­a­tion in­dus­try needs to be boost­ed, con­tends Har­ry Dass, chair­man and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Cou­va-based Briko Air Ser­vices Ltd, as he an­nounced plans by Briko to at­tract in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents to its com­mer­cial pi­lot's train­ing school. Dass and his broth­er Rooplal K Dass, the com­pa­ny's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and chief pi­lot, were at the time speak­ing with the Busi­ness Guardian at Briko's Cam­den op­er­a­tions.Dass said Briko has been run­ning its pi­lot school since 1983 pro­vid­ing train­ing for pri­vate pi­lots and start­ed of­fer­ing com­mer­cial flight train­ing for fixed-wing air­craft one year ago. He said a syl­labus for com­mer­cial he­li­copter pi­lots train­ing has al­ready been sub­mit­ted and could be op­er­a­tional with­in six to eight months, once all of the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (TTCAA) re­quire­ments are met.What does this mean for T&T? Ac­cord­ing to Dass, Briko's flight school has the po­ten­tial to at­tract a cadre of in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents who oth­er­wise have to trav­el to the Unit­ed States to train. He said some of these stu­dents are un­able to get visas to en­ter the Unit­ed States and would have to cough up a lot more­money to pay for train­ing in the US. Dass said a lot of spin-off jobs could be gen­er­at­ed by in­di­vid­u­als cater­ing to the needs of the for­eign stu­dents. Dass said there are cur­rent­ly 80 stu­dents train­ing for their pri­vate pi­lot's li­cence and ten study­ing for the in­stru­men­ta­tion leg of their com­mer­cial li­cence. He said Briko has 14 air­craft and its ca­pac­i­ty can be in­creased once there is a de­mand for stu­dents. Dass said the train­ing meets all in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards. He said the eco­nom­ic slide has not im­pact­ed too bad­ly on Briko's flight school but is hope­ful since the com­pa­ny has ap­plied for Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) fund­ing for part of the cost for lo­cal stu­dents.He said the GATE process is al­most com­plete but be­lieves that GATE would pay a per­cent­age of the cost of the com­mer­cial pi­lots li­cence.Dass said with the in­tro­duc­tion of its he­li­copter flight train­ing school-in­clud­ing its oth­er avi­a­tion op­er­a­tions-Cam­den airstrip is ful­ly utilised. In its hey­day, the 5,000-foot long airstrip was used as a mil­i­tary airstrip dur­ing World War II and was lat­er used by Ca­roni (1975) Ltd as a base for Ca­roni's aer­i­al spray­ing op­er­a­tion. Since the late 1980s, Briko has been us­ing the fa­cil­i­ty con­duct­ing sev­er­al op­er­a­tions flight train­ing, he­li­copter off­shore and char­ters ser­vices, ban­ner tow­ing and sur­veys.

The fa­cil­i­ties is al­so used by Na­tion­al He­li­copter Ser­vices Ltd on a dai­ly ba­sis for its pi­lots train­ing and for emer­gen­cies."It should be not­ed that the airstrip is the al­ter­nate for Pi­ar­co in events of emer­gen­cies for gen­er­al avi­a­tion and light air­craft. In this re­gard, it has served its pur­pose for Briko, Na­tion­al He­li­copter, Bris­tow and Ever­green in the past."Dass said the Cam­den strip is a ful­ly as­phalt paved airstrip 5,000 feet in length and 150 feet wide, same as Pi­ar­co, and can be op­er­a­tional with­in three months with mi­nor up­grade once it is the will of the Gov­ern­ment to do so. Briko's pro­pos­al is to start the air­bridge ser­vice do­ing a min­i­mum of 14 sec­tors with one of its two Jet­streams 19-pas­sen­ger air­craft from Cam­den to To­ba­go to Cam­den dai­ly to cope with the ca­pac­i­ty of trav­ellers be­tween T&T who live in south and cen­tral Trinidad. He said a large air­craft op­er­at­ing from Cam­den would not be eco­nom­i­cal for the gov­ern­ment and sug­gest­ed the use of small­er air­craft at the Jet­stream 3200 that can car­ry 19 pas­sen­gers. Ac­cord­ing to Dass, the area al­so has the po­ten­tial to ex­pand in­to a ma­jor avi­a­tion ser­vices and main­te­nance in­dus­try.He said his com­pa­ny has op­er­at­ed its Jet­streams out of neigh­bour­ing is­lands on a dai­ly ba­sis on two six-month con­tracts be­tween Tor­to­la, St Maarten, Sta­tia, Do­mini­ca, St Kitts, St Lu­cia and T&T.