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Friday, August 8, 2025

Daughter of retired cricketer identified as trainee pilot in crash

by

Otto Carrington
1387 days ago
20211020
Former West Indies cricketer Mervyn Dillon with his daughter trainee pilot Merelle, who crashed while on a training flight on Tuesday.

Former West Indies cricketer Mervyn Dillon with his daughter trainee pilot Merelle, who crashed while on a training flight on Tuesday.

The daugh­ter of re­tired West In­dies crick­eter Mervyn Dil­lon was the pi­lot trainee in Tues­day’s plane crash in Pi­ar­co and ac­cord­ing to her fa­ther, the in­ci­dent will not de­rail her dream of be­com­ing a pi­lot.

The 24-year-old has been iden­ti­fied as Merelle Dil­lion.

In a phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the for­mer West In­dies Crick­eter said Merelle was dis­charged from hos­pi­tal and was in some dis­com­fort.

He added that the med­ica­tion his daugh­ter was giv­en is help­ing but he will mon­i­tor her over the next few days.

But over­all Dil­lion said he is hap­py his daugh­ter is safe and he is sure this will not be a de­ter­rent for her to con­tin­ue her jour­ney of be­com­ing a pi­lot.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty will be in­ves­ti­gat­ing the crash.

We were told that Civ­il Avi­a­tion along with oth­er agen­cies will be look­ing in­to the in­ci­dent and a re­port is ex­pect­ed to be sub­mit­ted once it is com­plet­ed.

It is not clear how long the probe is ex­pect­ed to take.

Yes­ter­day of­fi­cials were re­mov­ing the plane wreck from the site, with as­sis­tance from Kall­co Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.

On Tues­day, around 9:48 am Flight In­struc­tor Ran­dell James of Aer­i­al World Ser­vices Ltd was con­duct­ing a train­ing flight with Merelle Dil­lon when the air­craft that they were fly­ing, Reg No 9Y-TJU a Di­a­mond DA40 Light 4 Seater Aero­plane, crashed while land­ing on run­way 10 at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

It is be­lieved the plane ex­pe­ri­enced me­chan­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties and the trainee pi­lot had to ex­e­cute a forced land­ing on the north­ern bank of the Orop­une Riv­er.

Aer­i­al World Ser­vices Man­ag­er, Nigel Ram­sa­hai told Guardian Me­dia that flight in­struc­tor Ran­dell James was al­so dis­charged from hos­pi­tal and is do­ing well.

He added that the air­craft will re­turn to its hang­er at Aer­i­al World Ser­vice in Cou­va.

The air­craft is es­ti­mat­ed to cost $600,000 US.


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