George­town-The Ched­di Ja­gan In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port Cor­po­ra­tion (CJI­AC) held a press con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day at which its chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ramesh Ghir high­light­ed the first re­sponse of the air­port's se­nior man­agers, Guyana De­fence Force, Guyana Po­lice Force (Timehri) and health per­son­nel to the Caribbean Air­lines Flight BW 523 ac­ci­dent which oc­curred on Ju­ly 30 at 1.32 am. The flight orig­i­nat­ed from the JFK In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and tran­sit­ed in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and To­ba­go, be­fore pro­ceed­ing to Guyana. There were 154 pas­sen­gers, one in­fant and six crew mem­bers.

Ghir out­lined that at 1.33 am the air traf­fic con­troller no­ti­fied the air­port du­ty of­fi­cer about the ac­ci­dent and at 1.34 am to 1.41 am pro­ceed­ed to ac­ti­vate the emer­gency plan by es­tab­lish­ing con­tact with peo­ple, in­clud­ing the CEO, deputy man­ag­er of air­port op­er­a­tions, se­nior aero­drome of­fi­cer, GDF Ops, Timehri po­lice, port health, George­town Pub­lic Hos­pi­tal Cor­po­ra­tion (GPHC), Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed, off-du­ty air­port op­er­a­tions, main­te­nance staff, aero­drome fire ser­vice, res­cue co-or­di­na­tion cen­tre and the air­craft op­er­a­tor. He em­pha­sised that the calls were made in ac­cor­dance with the es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures in the Air­port Emer­gency Plan.

The ramp at­ten­dants, who were await­ing the ar­rival of the air­craft, wit­nessed the in­ci­dent and pro­ceed­ed to­ward the crash site. The CEO not­ed that the aero­drome's fire ser­vice re­spond­ed to the crash site with­in three min­utes with three fire ten­ders and were po­si­tioned to pro­vide light­ing to the scene, re­spond to any fire and al­so give as­sis­tance to pas­sen­gers ex­it­ing the air­craft via the wings and emer­gency chute. Foam was sprayed on the left en­gine since it was ob­served that it was smok­ing. He stat­ed that when this was done, the se­nior aero­drome of­fi­cer along with mem­bers of the GPF com­menced the for­ma­tion of the in­ner cor­don around the air­craft; and fol­low­ing this the GDF es­tab­lished the out­er se­cu­ri­ty cor­don.

Ghir said while these ac­tiv­i­ties were be­ing car­ried out, sev­er­al ve­hi­cles from the air­port and near­by com­mu­ni­ty be­gan ar­riv­ing at the scene and were used to trans­port pas­sen­gers to the ter­mi­nal. At 2.20 am, the se­nior aero­drome of­fi­cer ad­vised the man­ag­er of the air traf­fic ser­vices to close the run­way which was lat­er re­opened at 11.30 am for in­ter­na­tion­al flights on the pri­ma­ry run­way. As it re­lates to the health­care ser­vices de­liv­ered, Ghir said the Port Health Of­fi­cer at­tend­ed to 31 peo­ple, in the Ar­rival Im­mi­gra­tion Area, most of who were suf­fer­ing from shock and mi­nor in­juries. He added that the four pas­sen­gers who were se­ri­ous­ly in­jured were trans­port­ed to the GPHC where they were ad­mit­ted.

In light of the in­ci­dent, Caribbean Air­lines rep­re­sen­ta­tives, in­spec­tors from Trinidad and To­ba­go and Suri­name Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty are in Guyana, par­tic­i­pat­ing in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion which is be­ing led by the Guyana Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty's chief in­ves­ti­ga­tor, Paula McLen­non. Al­so, of­fi­cials from the Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty from Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica have been in con­stant con­tact with their Guyanese coun­ter­parts to as­sist in tech­ni­cal co-op­er­a­tion. Ad­di­tion­al in­spec­tors from CAS­SOS and a team from the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca's Na­tion­al Safe­ty Trans­porta­tion Board are al­so en­gaged in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Work is on­go­ing to hand over the air­craft to Caribbean Air­lines.

Dur­ing the press con­fer­ence, Ghir al­so re­spond­ed to ques­tions con­cern­ing claims that taxi dri­vers were charg­ing high fares to trans­port peo­ple from the crash site to the ter­mi­nal, ef­fi­cien­cy of the air­port's equip­ment and squat­ters re­sid­ing in close prox­im­i­ty to the area. Ghir not­ed that thus far, one taxi dri­ver was found to have erred and has been sus­pend­ed. As it re­lates to the ad­e­quate and ef­fi­cient func­tion­ing of the air­port, Ghir con­firmed that all the equip­ment was in work­ing or­der and the run­way was up to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards. He em­pha­sised that CJIA had a track record where there had nev­er been an in­ci­dent of this na­ture. With re­gards to the squat­ters liv­ing near the run­way, Ghir said an in­ter­nal meet­ing would be held this week where this is­sue would be looked at. He said sev­er­al meet­ing had been held with the squat­ters about their re­lo­ca­tion since many of them were oc­cu­py­ing CJIA's land.

(Sto­ry and pho­tos cour­tesy Guyana's Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Agency (GI­NA).