BAVI­TA GOPAULCHAN

Se­nior Pro­duc­er

bavi­ta.gopaulchan@guardian.co.tt

The Avi­a­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Al­lied Work­ers’ Union (ACAWU) has joined the Trinidad and To­ba­go Air­line Pi­lots’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA) in call­ing for ur­gent ac­tion on safe­ty at Caribbean Air­lines (CAL), af­ter flight BW1541 was forced to make an emer­gency land­ing at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Mon­day night. The flight, which de­part­ed from To­ba­go with 68 pas­sen­gers and four crew mem­bers on­board, ran out of fu­el in one of its en­gines short­ly be­fore it was sched­uled to land.

A video cir­cu­lat­ing on­line cap­tured the tense mo­ments in­side the cab­in as crew mem­bers shout­ed emer­gency com­mands. While no in­juries were re­port­ed, Tynielle Jack, a pas­sen­ger on­board the flight, told Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day that she was trau­ma­tised and plans to avoid the air­bridge and will in­stead use the seabridge. She, how­ev­er, praised the cap­tain and crew for en­sur­ing their safe­ty. 

Avi­a­tion of­fi­cials have since launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, tem­porar­i­ly re­mov­ing a pi­lot and two tech­ni­cians from ac­tive du­ty while they de­ter­mine the cause. Ac­cord­ing to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in the Sen­ate on Tues­day, the is­sue stemmed from in­ac­cu­rate fu­el mea­sure­ments in the air­craft’s left tank. He said the ATR 72-600 in­volved has been with­drawn from ser­vice pend­ing fur­ther re­view.

ACAWU, in a state­ment yes­ter­day, in­di­cat­ed that this is just the lat­est in a se­ries of trou­bling in­ci­dents over the past six weeks, in­clud­ing two cas­es of miss­ing nose wheels and an­oth­er in­volv­ing en­gine fail­ure. The union ar­gued that these re­cur­ring is­sues high­light sys­temic prob­lems that de­mand im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion.

De­spite mul­ti­ple writ­ten re­quests to ad­dress safe­ty and op­er­a­tional con­cerns, ACAWU claims Caribbean Air­lines has large­ly ig­nored them, re­fus­ing to ac­knowl­edge the union’s sta­tus. 

Ac­cord­ing to the union, “ACAWU is of­fi­cial­ly recog­nised by the In­dus­tri­al Court of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Reg­is­tra­tion Recog­ni­tion and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go as the Reg­is­tered Ma­jor­i­ty Union (RMU) for BWIA em­ploy­ees, and with Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed hav­ing been de­ter­mined as the suc­ces­sor of BWIA by both the In­dus­tri­al Court and Court of Ap­peal, it is deeply con­cerned about the lack of en­gage­ment and re­sponse from the com­pa­ny re­gard­ing crit­i­cal safe­ty and op­er­a­tional is­sues.”

The union fur­ther not­ed, “De­spite sev­er­al writ­ten re­quests from ACAWU to ad­dress large-scale con­cerns af­fect­ing em­ploy­ees, in­clu­sive of health and safe­ty, the com­pa­ny has large­ly ig­nored these ef­forts, claim­ing it does not recog­nise the union’s sta­tus.” 

It added, “While the CEO has pub­licly claimed to have an ‘open-door pol­i­cy’ and dis­missed the need for ‘third-par­ty in­ter­ven­tion’, the union is not an ex­ter­nal en­ti­ty. It is a unit­ed body made up en­tire­ly of the air­line’s em­ploy­ees.”

ACAWU was un­able to pro­vide cor­re­spon­dences to CAL in which con­cerns on safe­ty were raised, say­ing that it is “sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion.”

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion has dis­cour­aged em­ploy­ees from re­port­ing safe­ty con­cerns, leav­ing the union as one of the on­ly safe av­enues to raise crit­i­cal is­sues with­out risk­ing in­di­vid­ual re­tal­i­a­tion,” ACAWU’s re­lease stat­ed. 

On Tues­day, TTAL­PA al­so re­vealed it has warned about risks linked to CAL’s ATR fleet for over a decade. The as­so­ci­a­tion said mul­ti­ple near miss­es in re­cent months point to a trou­bling pat­tern that can­not be ig­nored and called for an ur­gent meet­ing with the state-owned com­pa­ny.

ACAWU said it does not seek to un­der­mine Caribbean Air­lines but warned that with­out ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion, these is­sues could es­ca­late in­to a tragedy sim­i­lar to the 2022 Paria/LM­CS div­ing dis­as­ter, in which four divers died.

‘Take con­cerns

to Civ­il Avi­a­tion’

Mean­while, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ma­yaro, Rush­ton Paray, be­lieves Caribbean Air­lines has a strong track record in avi­a­tion safe­ty, but he not­ed that these in­ci­dents de­mand swift cor­rec­tive mea­sures.

“Se­ri­ous ques­tions must be an­swered re­gard­ing whether the air­craft was fu­elled cor­rect­ly and whether the amount was prop­er­ly ver­i­fied. The air­line must de­ter­mine if fu­el lev­els were ad­e­quate­ly checked be­fore de­par­ture and whether faulty gauges con­tributed to a false read­ing. There must al­so be an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to whether fu­elling records and pro­ce­dures were prop­er­ly fol­lowed, or if a break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tion led to this dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion,” Paray sug­gest­ed. 

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Oropouche East, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, al­so called for CAL and avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tors to ur­gent­ly re­spond to the pi­lots’ warn­ings.

In re­sponse to the con­cerns be­ing raised, the air­line would on­ly say that the safe­ty of its staff and pas­sen­gers is of “ut­most im­por­tance”.

“How­ev­er, this mat­ter is the sub­ject of an on­go­ing and very thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion and in the in­ter­est of trans­paren­cy and fair­ness, we must al­low this com­pre­hen­sive process to take place. As such, I have no fur­ther state­ment at this time,” said CAL’s ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er, Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Dionne Liguore. 

How­ev­er, for­mer di­rec­tor gen­er­al of Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty, Ramesh Latch­me­di­al, ad­vised the unions to re­port their con­cerns to the au­thor­i­ty and bring for­ward the ev­i­dence of safe­ty haz­ards. 

“If the union is of the view that CAL is ig­nor­ing the safe­ty con­cerns of the union they have every right to go through the reg­u­la­to­ry body,” Latch­me­di­al ad­vised.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter has yet to re­spond to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was al­so con­tact­ed on whether he has in­struct­ed Min­is­ter Im­bert, as the line min­is­ter to CAL, to in­ter­vene in dis­cus­sions with the air­line. There was no re­sponse up to late yes­ter­day evening.

‘We feel safe’

Mean­while, Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials said they had full con­fi­dence in Caribbean Air­lines.

Fol­low­ing the com­mis­sion­ing of the Golds­bor­ough Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant in To­ba­go yes­ter­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son and Sen­a­tor Lau­rence His­lop said they had con­fi­dence in the na­tion­al air­line and would use CAL to trans­port them be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad. They urged the pub­lic to wait for the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Mon­day’s in­ci­dent.

—With re­port­ing by

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les