Joshua Seemu­n­gal

The three most qual­i­fied he­li­copter pi­lots of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Air Guard have ten­dered their res­ig­na­tions ef­fec­tive the end of Jan­u­ary, rais­ing con­cerns about coun­try’s abil­i­ty to pa­trol its bor­ders, of­fer air sup­port to po­lice as well as do emer­gency and med­ical evac­u­a­tions.

In re­cent years, the Air Guard has been faced with sev­er­al is­sues in­clud­ing a de­creas­ing num­ber of func­tion­al he­li­copters and a mul­ti­tude of res­ig­na­tions, with close to 20 ex­pe­ri­enced he­li­copter pi­lots re­sign­ing in the last four years.

There have al­so been long-stand­ing re­ports of un­rest and dis­en­chant­ment among staff which have re­port­ed­ly af­fect­ed op­er­a­tions.

The three pi­lots who re­cent­ly re­signed are part of an ex­clu­sive group of pi­lots who are trained in spe­cial op­er­a­tions such as pa­trols, res­cues and emer­gency hos­pi­tal trans­port.

They were once part of a group of eight pi­lots for­mer­ly con­tract­ed to the Na­tion­al Op­er­at­ing Cen­tre (NOC) of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In late 2019, for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young trans­ferred two he­li­copters—an AS355FX and a BO105—and the pi­lots to the Air Guard. The AS355FX he­li­copter, which ac­cord­ing to on­line es­ti­mates costs more than US$1.195 mil­lion pre-owned, has been down with trans­mis­sion is­sues, leav­ing the unit with one func­tion­al he­li­copter.

To com­pound the sit­u­a­tion, two pi­lots who with­held their names said while there are ju­nior he­li­copter pi­lots in the Air Guard, they do not have the nec­es­sary skills.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty sources said it would be a se­ri­ous safe­ty risk for the ju­nior pi­lots to fly by them­selves.

The young pi­lots, sources said, need to be trained and that would take some time.

Mak­ing ref­er­ence to a Na­tion­al He­li­copter Ser­vices Lim­it­ed he­li­copter that crashed in Arou­ca in May 2019 while search­ing for eight prison es­capees, a source re­it­er­at­ed that pi­lots need to have their li­cences in ad­di­tion to spe­cialised skills.

The three pi­lots said that they would like to con­tin­ue on the job but sev­er­al long-ex­ist­ing con­cerns con­tin­ue to go un­re­solved. They said they gave the ser­vice time to ad­dress their con­cerns but were told in re­sponse that they can re­sign if they want.

“We’ve downed tools, and we are say­ing we are not fly­ing un­til this sit­u­a­tion is reme­died.

“You’ve heard this in the past when the coun­try had no he­li­copter cov­er­age for a month. There’s a fish­er­man who goes miss­ing and they say, where are the he­li­copters? Well, the guys are not there, so they can’t fly.

‘There’s no aer­i­al cov­er­age for the is­land for this pe­ri­od. So for the Car­ni­val where you’d want to have po­lice look­ing over and watch­ing what is go­ing on, giv­ing guid­ance. That’s not go­ing to be there. If we have a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter right now, there’s no sup­port for that,” one of the pi­lots said.

Con­cerns

The pi­lots have con­trac­tu­al con­cerns.

They claimed that sev­er­al mem­bers of the De­fence Force, in­clud­ing air­craft pi­lots, had their con­tracts ex­tend­ed long-term, but they con­tin­ue to be em­ployed on short-term con­tracts.

When they were first as­signed to the Air Guard, they said they were giv­en a six-month con­tract and told that they would get a longer-term con­tract up­on its ex­pi­ra­tion.

In­stead, they said, they were giv­en three suc­ces­sive three-month con­tracts.

“Every year we do a re­cur­ren­cy test to prove that we are com­pe­tent. One guy was sick dur­ing this pe­ri­od, so he couldn’t do it. They just tossed him out. Leav­ing us with three pi­lots. It’s a sig­nif­i­cant amount of work­load.

“They’ve been telling us the con­tract has been at a Cab­i­net note for two years. We have no sick leave. I don’t have a salary. I don’t know what’s go­ing to hap­pen. We went through COVID with­out sick leave, and we all got COVID. We had to work it out among our­selves to fig­ure out how to cov­er it,” one of the pi­lots com­plained.

“You can’t go to the bank or any­thing. We didn’t work for the whole of Oc­to­ber. There are a lot of breaks now. A week, three weeks or a month. It’s hurt­ful. I chose this unit. I worked un­der SORTT, SSA, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and NOC. And af­ter 13 years, it’s dis­ap­point­ing to see this is the lev­el we are at. It has a lot to do with the man­age­ment of the Air Guard,” an­oth­er pi­lot said.

The pi­lots al­so have health and safe­ty con­cerns.

“In avi­a­tion, every op­er­a­tor is guid­ed by an op­er­a­tions man­u­al and stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dure. We have been ask­ing for these things from the Air Guard for the last three years and there’s noth­ing in place. Noth­ing. When we fly, we have to fly based on our ex­pe­ri­ence and our knowl­edge of what we used to do.

“If any­thing were to hap­pen, we would be held ac­count­able be­cause we have no guide­lines,” they lament­ed.

A for­mer he­li­copter pi­lot, who re­signed, said while the he­li­copters are in­sured, the pi­lots are not.

Crime fight ‘com­pro­mised’

The pi­lots claimed the abil­i­ty to de­tect crimes was com­pro­mised by the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to ‘dis­man­tle’ their NOC team and trans­fer them to the Air Guard.

“Look at the mur­der rate now. When I was work­ing with the Na­tion­al Op­er­at­ing Cen­tre, every day we were out on a mur­der call and there was a res­o­lu­tion to it. Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly.

“There are no more night pa­trols. I re­mem­ber there was a time two guys robbed a place in Pe­nal, and they called the he­li­copters. We came and found the guys be­hind the build­ing. An­oth­er time, I ran down a man from Trou Macaque, Laven­tille to Beetham. We were mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. When we had ri­ots in Port-of-Spain, we had video footage of peo­ple walk­ing out of the Beetham. I run down a boat with a set of mar­i­jua­na off the new coast,” the for­mer he­li­copter pi­lot re­called.

“Air Guard is a waste of space. The or­gan­i­sa­tion had some prob­lems, but they didn’t have to take it and dis­man­tle the thing. When we fly at 500ft, no crim­i­nal is do­ing any crime when we are there be­cause by the time they do it, we get a call, and we are gone af­ter them.

“The ra­dios we had we could talk to po­lice, fire, coast­guard. They take away all the com­mu­ni­ca­tion. You can't even talk to po­lice on the ground any­more,” said the he­li­copter pi­lot with more than 25 years of ser­vice.

The for­mer pi­lot said the he­li­copters were out­fit­ted with ex­pen­sive in­frared cam­eras that were able to de­tect peo­ple hid­ing from po­lice of­fi­cers.

How­ev­er, he said, the cam­eras were re­moved and placed in a box and left to waste.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, they’ve been us­ing NHSL to bring pa­tients back and forth from the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal. That is some­thing we used to do at no cost. The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly was left with a bill of some­thing like $23 mil­lion for those ser­vices,” a pi­lot said, point­ing to mis­use and mis­man­age­ment.

De­fence Force: No re­sponse

Ask to com­ment on the res­ig­na­tions, De­fence Force Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Lieu­tenant Sher­ron Man­swell said, "no re­sponse."

Calls to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds were un­suc­cess­ful.

Back­ground

The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment pur­chased four AgustaWest­land he­li­copters to bol­ster the coun­try's air sup­port.

The he­li­copters were used, among oth­er things, to as­sist with coastal pa­trols, po­lice op­er­a­tions and emer­gency res­cues.

In 2017, cit­ing the high costs to main­tain the air­craft, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­cid­ed to ground the four he­li­copters.

“We de­cid­ed at the lev­el of Cab­i­net that we are not in a po­si­tion to pay $200 mil­lion to main­tain our four Au­gus­ta he­li­copters for one year. We just can’t af­ford that and if we can’t af­ford it the he­li­copters will stay on the ground," the Prime Min­is­ter had said.

Three years lat­er, in Oc­to­ber 2020, for­mer min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young had an­nounced that one of the he­li­copters was go­ing to be used for the Air Guard.

“The AW139s were ground­ed in June 2017, if my mem­o­ry serves me cor­rect­ly, we have de­cid­ed on the Cab­i­net to get one of those AW139s back op­er­a­tional which I ex­pect to hap­pen with­in the next cou­ple of weeks,” he said at a press brief­ing.

Young had ex­plained that while the he­li­copters were ground­ed, there wasn’t use for many of the staff at­tached. This move means that sev­er­al of­fi­cers will be able to re­turn to work.

The Air Wing of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force was formed in Feb­ru­ary 1966 and was ini­tial­ly part of the Coast Guard and was called the Air Wing of the Coast Guard.

But in 1977 it was sep­a­rat­ed as its en­ti­ty. In 2005, it was re­named the Trinidad & To­ba­go Air Guard (TTAG). Its pur­pos­es are to pro­tect and pa­trol Trinidad and To­ba­go’s air­space, and it is al­so used for trans­port, search and res­cue and li­ai­son mis­sions.

Its bases are lo­cat­ed at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, ANR In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and Ch­aguara­mas.