Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

From the roar­ing vrooms of en­gines to the scream­ing screech­es of brakes bring­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of pounds of alu­mini­um al­loy to a halt, peo­ple liv­ing near the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port have grown ac­cus­tomed to the many ear-split­ting sounds emit­ted by planes.

The au­di­ble ex­po­sure gives them a unique abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy the nu­ances of avi­a­tion sounds.

While the typ­i­cal per­son may not be able to iden­ti­fy a plane’s sound, many res­i­dents of Pi­ar­co and Ca­roni can iden­ti­fy spe­cif­ic planes just by lis­ten­ing.

In re­cent weeks, how­ev­er, some res­i­dents have heard un­fa­mil­iar sounds above them.

“When those big guys come to land, the whole place does vi­brate, you know. That’s the dou­ble-en­gine planes.

“Yeah, we see them, but most­ly in the evening when they come to fu­el. They land for half an hour or so and then go up again. I have ob­served the planes, but you have to go to the oth­er side or the back road. The on­ly time the big ones re­main is if they are bring­ing car­go. They park up right here, near my home,” Ramesh, whose name has been changed to pro­tect his iden­ti­ty, said.

Ramesh, like oth­ers liv­ing along Gold­en Grove Road, re­lat­ed tales of large grey US mil­i­tary air­craft. Their sto­ries are bol­stered by flight da­ta in­for­ma­tion, which showed US mil­i­tary air­craft land­ing and leav­ing Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port al­most dai­ly from De­cem­ber 13 to 23.

Ben­ny Rag­bir, along with a man known in the area as Ravi B, can eas­i­ly re­count the sights and sounds.

“Yeah, it have one does be fly­ing around here right through, boy, but I eh see­ing it these days. That was a grey Amer­i­can plane,” Ravi said.

Like Ramesh, Ben­ny’s home bor­ders the air­port fence.

A grey and white air traf­fic con­trol tow­er, re­sem­bling a chis­elled torch­light, casts a shad­ow over his one-sto­ry home.

“Yes, I no­ticed two Amer­i­can air­craft that land­ed here. I saw an­oth­er car­go plane that came as well last year. It of­floaded ve­hi­cles, like big trucks, and all those kinds of things. It was a large plane,” he claimed.

The sights and sounds of the US mil­i­tary air­craft and equip­ment took Ben­ny down mem­o­ry lane.

The 85-year-old re­called the US mil­i­tary pres­ence in Trinidad dur­ing and af­ter World War II.

“I don’t see any­thing wrong with that be­cause they were here be­fore pro­tect­ing this coun­try. When World War II was go­ing on, the Amer­i­cans used to do the pa­trolling on the roads to make sure every­thing was al­right.

“I don’t think it’s wrong right now, be­cause right now, the way the world is go­ing, Trinidad needs out­side help, and the on­ly peo­ple to help us are the Amer­i­cans. Peo­ple will just talk, cause they don’t know, but they need to come and help. Right now, they are pa­trolling our bor­ders,” he said.

Gold­en Grove Road weaves be­hind the air­port, join­ing the Ca­roni North Bank Road at a junc­tion.

The Ca­roni North Bank Road then wraps around the air­port’s perime­ter up to Mau­si­ca.

In Mau­si­ca, two men op­er­at­ing con­struc­tion ma­chin­ery stock­piled mounds of red sand.

The trac­tor op­er­a­tor had an el­e­vat­ed view of his sur­round­ings, of­fer­ing him a clear­er view of planes com­ing in­to land on the ‘old’ side of the run­way.

He claimed to have seen mil­i­tary planes com­ing in to land fair­ly reg­u­lar­ly over the last few weeks.

“They does come fly­ing over low from this side,” he said.

Over on the oth­er side of the air­port, in Ca­roni, res­i­dents of La Soli­ta Trace said they have the best view of air­craft ready­ing to land.

Land­ing planes, which take the reg­u­lar route, fly di­rect­ly over their homes, on­ly hun­dreds of feet above.

“It have one or two strange planes that I’ve no­ticed. Not every day, but about every three days, I would hear some­thing pass - the grey ones," a La Soli­ta Trace res­i­dent said.

An­oth­er res­i­dent re­port­ed see­ing US mil­i­tary planes far less fre­quent­ly.

“Way be­fore all this bac­cha­nal, I saw a huge grey mil­i­tary plane land with a chop­per in­side. I haven’t seen any­thing oth­er than that, re­al­ly,” he said.

On De­cem­ber 15, the Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial­ly grant­ed the US mil­i­tary per­mis­sion to use T&T’s air­ports.

The arrange­ment was de­scribed as ‘lo­gis­tics-re­lat­ed.’

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to flight da­ta, US mil­i­tary planes were ar­riv­ing in Pi­ar­co at least three days be­fore the an­nounce­ment of the agree­ment.

On Thurs­day night, the world’s heav­i­est op­er­at­ing car­go plane, the Antonov Air­lines AN-124, land­ed at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

The Ukrain­ian car­go plane has vis­it­ed the air­port be­fore over the years, ac­cord­ing to air­port sources.

The Antonov is not a US mil­i­tary as­set, but it has been char­tered by the US mil­i­tary in the past for mov­ing unique and over­sized equip­ment, such as US-made mil­i­tary trucks, tanks and he­li­copters.

It has been de­scribed as a key mil­i­tary part­ner of the Pen­ta­gon. It holds up to 150 tonnes.

In Jan­u­ary, Ecuado­ri­an me­dia re­port­ed that the US mil­i­tary dropped off equip­ment and per­son­nel in Quito us­ing the same mod­el of Antonov. The reg­is­tra­tion num­bers were dif­fer­ent, how­ev­er.

Guardian Me­dia was un­able to con­firm whether the car­go plane de­liv­ered mil­i­tary equip­ment.

A cou­ple of air­port sources sug­gest­ed that the de­liv­ery was equip­ment for Pro­man’s plant at the Pt Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. This was not con­firmed.

Be­fore the Unit­ed Na­tions, ear­li­er this week, the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment ac­cused the US gov­ern­ment of ex­tor­tion af­ter it seized two oil tankers.

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump or­dered a naval block­ade on De­cem­ber 16, say­ing he would sell or keep the crude oil.

The US al­so car­ried out strikes on Venezue­lan boats ac­cused of smug­gling drugs, killing an es­ti­mat­ed 104 peo­ple since Sep­tem­ber 2. The US mil­i­tary has sent sev­er­al air­craft car­ri­ers and war­ships to the re­gion, de­ploy­ing around 15,000 troops.

Flight Da­ta

Flight da­ta about US mil­i­tary air­craft ar­rivals from of­fi­cial sources such as the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the T&T gov­ern­ment, or the US mil­i­tary is not pub­licly avail­able.

How­ev­er, fligh­tradar24.com – a Swedish In­ter­net-based ser­vice that shows re­al-time air­craft flight track­ing in­for­ma­tion – and FlightAware.com – the world’s largest flight track­ing plat­form – have some da­ta about US mil­i­tary plane ar­rivals at Pi­ar­co.

N986HA - De Hav­il­land Cana­da Dash 8-200. The US mil­i­tary air­craft spe­cialis­es in mar­itime pa­trol, sur­veil­lance, VIP trans­port, search and res­cue, car­go, and elec­tron­ic war­fare. Be­tween De­cem­ber 12 and De­cem­ber 24, ac­cord­ing to Fligh­tradar24 and FlightAware, the air­craft land­ed in Pi­ar­co at least nine times.

While the US does not have a per­ma­nent mil­i­tary base in Pun­ta Cana, in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, in late No­vem­ber 2025, it gained tem­po­rary ac­cess to the is­land’s San Isidro Air Base and the Las Amer­i­c­as In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port for an­ti-drug op­er­a­tions, lo­gis­tics, re­fu­elling and per­son­nel trans­port re­lat­ed to the US’s on­go­ing op­er­a­tions near Venezuela.

BAT86 - P-9A Mar­itime Pa­trol Air­craft. It is re­port­ed­ly op­er­at­ed by US De­fense Con­trac­tor Sier­ra Neva­da Cor­po­ra­tion on be­half of the US Air Force and is cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing in the Caribbean as a US mil­i­tary in­tel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance, re­con­nais­sance and drug in­ter­dic­tion air­craft.

Be­tween De­cem­ber 13 and De­cem­ber 23, ac­cord­ing to Fligh­tradar24 and FlightAware, the air­craft land­ed in Pi­ar­co at least nine times.

Be­tween De­cem­ber 14 and De­cem­ber 21, the plane left Pi­ar­co every morn­ing be­fore re­turn­ing in the evening.

BAT91 - De Hav­il­land Cana­da Dash 8-200. Op­er­at­ed by the US mil­i­tary. It is re­port­ed­ly used in con­junc­tion with the BAT86 to car­ry out in­tel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance and re­con­nais­sance, and drug in­ter­dic­tion mis­sions.

Be­tween De­cem­ber 12 and De­cem­ber 21, ac­cord­ing to Fligh­tradar24 and FlightAware, the air­craft land­ed in Pi­ar­co at least nine times.

Be­tween the dates, the air­craft left T&T every morn­ing be­fore re­turn­ing in the evening.