Brent Pin­heiro 

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt 

Mar­i­lyn Singh’s first time at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port was in the 70s to send an un­cle off to Cana­da. She was a child at the time but she re­mem­bers every­one dressed in their Sun­day best, ex­cite­ment fill­ing the air as the Singhs de­scend­ed on air­port with “grips” in tow and enough food to feed a vil­lage. What fol­lowed was a rau­cous af­fair filled with laugh­ter, jokes, food, and the oblig­a­tory cry­ing char­ac­ter. In this case, her grand­moth­er who, un­til the last sec­ond, re­fused to let her son go. The close-knit fam­i­ly wait­ed pa­tient­ly in the wav­ing gallery un­til he ap­peared on the tar­mac. Then, just like that, un­cle Sumair was gone to “for­eign” – the sound of good­byes and cry­ing punc­tu­at­ing the at­mos­phere.  

A British Airways 747 Jumbo Jet on tarmac at the Piarco International Airport. Photo dated Sept. 4th, 1989.

Sto­ries like Mar­i­lyn’s aren’t unique. Spend some time on any of the lo­cal avi­a­tion en­thu­si­ast or his­to­ry groups on Face­book and you’ll in­evitably come across a “Who re­mem­bers the wav­ing gallery?” post. The com­ment sec­tions are filled with mem­o­ries. When Pi­ar­co's new North Ter­mi­nal opened in 2001, many were dis­ap­point­ed to find out that, by de­sign, the wav­ing gallery of old was no more. In its place was, well... noth­ing. The non-trav­el­ling pub­lic left to view the tar­mac through the full-length win­dows of a piz­za out­let on the sec­ond floor, the smell of jet fu­el re­placed by the smell of piz­za. There, one could wave good­bye to loved ones head­ing out... to To­ba­go. In­ter­na­tion­al flights, how­ev­er, re­mained hid­den be­hind a mass of glass and steel. 

The South Terminal of the Piarco International Airport circa 1987. Photo: Guardian Archives.

Fast for­ward 21 years, and Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Hay­den New­ton is acute­ly aware of both the de­mands for and dis­ap­point­ments in the miss­ing space. Still bask­ing in the glow of be­ing rat­ed the Best Air­port in the Caribbean by in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed rat­ings agency Sky­trax, he spoke with Guardian Me­dia about the air­port’s plans for the fu­ture and its de­sire to at­tract the gen­er­al non-trav­el­ling pub­lic to its grounds. Asked about the wav­ing gallery of old and its role in at­tract­ing both fly­ers and vis­i­tors, he gave some­what sur­pris­ing news – a new wav­ing gallery was in the works. While not quite as open as be­fore due to se­cu­ri­ty re­stric­tions post-9/11, he says the new space would oc­cu­py part of the pre­vi­ous piz­za re­tail lo­ca­tion on the ter­mi­nal’s sec­ond floor with plans to ex­tend it fur­ther. But why now? Ac­cord­ing to New­ton, plans were al­ready in the works pre-covid, but were brought to a halt by the pan­dem­ic. The AATT is now ex­pect­ing the new space to be ready in 2023/2024. 

A visitor looking at the apron at Schiphol’s Panorama Terrace, Amsterdam. Image courtesy: Schiphol.nl

For avi­a­tion en­thu­si­asts like Charles Car­val­ho, pres­i­dent of the Light Aero­plane Club of Trinidad & To­ba­go, the news is wel­come. He’s been work­ing on a flight club of his own – aim­ing to use the old wav­ing gallery space in a way that brings avi­a­tion fans across gen­er­a­tions to­geth­er. How­ev­er, he says any ac­cess to avi­a­tion up close is a good thing and pro­motes avi­a­tion in T&T. Plane spot­ting isn’t new but in re­cent years air­ports around the world have be­gun to un­der­stand the ben­e­fits of ex­pos­ing the pub­lic to air­port op­er­a­tions and the fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits it brings. Sev­er­al air­ports in the UK, the US, the Nether­lands, Aus­tria, Turkey, and Aus­tralia al­ready of­fer ob­ser­va­tion plat­forms of vary­ing de­signs of­fer­ing up views of ei­ther the apron or the run­ways.  

A BWIA Lockheed L-1011 TriStar 500 on the tarmac at the Piarco International Airport circa 1982. Photo: Guardian Archives.

Such lo­ca­tions al­so serve as an in­for­mal re­cruit­ing tool of sorts for the avi­a­tion in­dus­try. An­tho­ny is a Trinida­di­an flight at­ten­dant work­ing for a ma­jor air­line. As a child, his fa­ther took him to the air­port of­ten – some­times to say good­bye to de­part­ing rel­a­tives, oth­er times just to see the planes on his way home from work. The first time he saw a BWIA Lock­heed L-1011 TriS­tar 500, its mas­sive Rolls Royce RB-211 en­gines push­ing 159,000lbs of thrust roar­ing down the run­way, he was hooked. “Un­for­get­table,” he says of the ex­pe­ri­ence. De­cid­ing to have a ca­reer in avi­a­tion was easy but, with­out the fi­nan­cial means to go to flight school, he’s now tak­ing a more round­about route to the flight deck – work­ing flights in the back to earn mon­ey to one day fly at the front.