Brent Pin­heiro

Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

The Prime Min­is­ters of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da are call­ing on Trinidad and To­ba­go to share rev­enue col­lect­ed from over­flight fees through the Pi­ar­co Flight In­for­ma­tion Re­gion (FIR), which they ar­gue en­com­pass­es por­tions of their sov­er­eign air­space.

Cur­rent­ly man­aged by T&T, Pi­ar­co FIR cov­ers skies from An­tigua in the north to Trinidad in the south, and east of Bar­ba­dos, stretch­ing near­ly halfway across the At­lantic Ocean.

Any air­craft en­ter­ing/tran­sit­ing the 750,000 square mile air­space is re­quired to pay over­flight fees for air nav­i­ga­tion ser­vices. Ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty’s 2023-2024 An­nu­al Re­port, 108,728 flights utilised the Pi­ar­co FIR be­tween Oc­to­ber 2023 and Sep­tem­ber 2024.

Dur­ing a Ju­ly 11 press con­fer­ence, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves ar­gued that his coun­try and oth­ers in the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of East­ern Caribbean States (OECS) have been ex­clud­ed from the man­age­ment and fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits of the FIR, de­spite it cov­er­ing part of their ter­ri­to­ry.

“They (T&T) make the mon­ey from the space that’s part of our prop­er­ty,” Gon­salves said.

Tourism and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our de­clined to com­ment, say­ing he had not re­viewed the re­lease from the SVG Gov­ern­ment.

For­mer di­rec­tor gen­er­al of Civ­il Avi­a­tion Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al re­ject­ed the claims, cit­ing in­ter­na­tion­al avi­a­tion law. He ex­plained that un­der the Chica­go Con­ven­tion—rat­i­fied by OECS states in­clud­ing SVG, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, and Bar­ba­dos—over­flight fees can on­ly be charged by the state pro­vid­ing nav­i­ga­tion ser­vices.

Since 1950, the In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Or­ga­ni­za­tion (ICAO) has tasked T&T with man­ag­ing the Pi­ar­co FIR, and cur­rent­ly, the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty pro­vides air nav­i­ga­tion ser­vices for up­per air­space above flight lev­el 245 (24,500 feet), from the mid-Caribbean to the mid-At­lantic.

St Vin­cent and An­tigua, by con­trast, man­age ser­vices on­ly with­in their Ter­mi­nal Con­trol Ar­eas (TMAs) be­low 24,500 feet.

“They are not pro­vid­ing any ser­vice what­so­ev­er in the up­per air­space,” Lutch­me­di­al em­pha­sised.

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne told Guardian Me­dia the coun­try re­cent­ly ac­quired a radar sys­tem ca­pa­ble of mon­i­tor­ing over­flight ac­tiv­i­ty. How­ev­er, Lutch­me­di­al main­tained that both ICAO rules and do­mes­tic law vest re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for nav­i­ga­tion ser­vices in the Pi­ar­co FIR sole­ly with T&T.

“The Civ­il Avi­a­tion Act clear­ly says that the radar is re­spon­si­ble for the pro­vi­sion of ser­vices in the FIR,” he said.

He added that this is­sue has sur­faced re­peat­ed­ly over the years, urg­ing re­gion­al lead­ers to fo­cus on restor­ing their coun­tries’ FAA Cat­e­go­ry 1 avi­a­tion safe­ty rat­ing.

“Do not be dis­tract­ed by flight charges for which you’re not en­ti­tled,” Lutch­me­di­al said. “Fo­cus your ef­forts on get­ting OECS states, in­clud­ing An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, back up to Cat­e­go­ry 1.”

In 2020, the FAA down­grad­ed six OECS mem­bers to Cat­e­go­ry 2 sta­tus due to fail­ure to meet ICAO safe­ty stan­dards. The down­grade pre­vents car­ri­ers such as LI­AT, based in An­tigua, from op­er­at­ing flights to the Unit­ed States.