Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­way in­to Mon­day’s in­ci­dent in which a Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) air­craft fly­ing from To­ba­go ran out of fu­el in one en­gine, forc­ing an emer­gency land­ing at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

A CAL pi­lot and two tech­ni­cians are no longer on ac­tive du­ty as a probe is on­go­ing.

The sit­u­a­tion led the pi­lots of BW1541 to in­struct pas­sen­gers to adopt the ‘brace’ po­si­tion, ac­cord­ing to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, who ad­dressed the is­sue in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day. Im­bert gave de­tails of the in­ci­dent af­ter UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark asked for the rea­sons be­hind the emer­gency land­ing of the air­craft. Mark al­so sought a sta­tus up­date on the air­craft’s op­er­a­tions.

A video cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia showed pas­sen­gers on board adopt­ing the brace po­si­tion while the cab­in crew could be heard call­ing out “Brace! Brace! Brace!

In the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Im­bert said, “I have been in­formed by CAL that there was an in­ci­dent with their ATR 72-600 air­craft, reg­is­tered as 9Y-TTC, on Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 27, at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10 pm when that air­craft made an emer­gency land­ing in­to Pi­ar­co.

“Based on what I’m see­ing in this re­port—it’s very tech­ni­cal—but it ap­pears there was a prob­lem with fu­el for one of the en­gines and one of the en­gines ba­si­cal­ly ran out of fu­el, which caused the cap­tain to make the manda­to­ry an­nounce­ment in ac­cor­dance with Civ­il Avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tions to the pas­sen­gers that they should get in­to the po­si­tion that is rec­om­mend­ed for an emer­gency land­ing.

“The cap­tain man­aged to pi­lot the air­craft safe­ly and land­ed well. There were no in­juries or any­thing of that na­ture to the pas­sen­gers, and the air­craft has since been with­drawn from ser­vice.

Ac­cord­ing to Im­bert, “it ap­pears the prob­lem arose from in­ac­cu­rate mea­sure­ments of the amount of fu­el in the left tank of the air­craft.”

On Mark’s query if an in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched in­to the emer­gency land­ing, Im­bert replied that it was a nat­ur­al ques­tion to ask, as he had al­so asked about it.

Im­bert added, “There are three per­sons in­volved—the pi­lot and two tech­ni­cians—with re­spect to the whole ques­tion of how much fu­el was in the par­tic­u­lar tank that fed the par­tic­u­lar en­gine that had the prob­lem.

“So they have been—I don’t want to use the words ‘with­drawn from ser­vice’—but, the air­craft has been with­drawn from ser­vice, and these three in­di­vid­u­als are not in ac­tive ser­vice at this point in time, which is nor­mal when you’re do­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“So they will fol­low their nor­mal pro­ce­dures—I don’t want to say much—I don’t know the names of the in­di­vid­u­als. I my­self don’t think I should get in­volved with that.

“But Caribbean Air­lines will fol­low all the es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures in ac­cor­dance with Civ­il Avi­a­tion rules and reg­u­la­tions and their own in­ter­nal in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions pro­ce­dures to make sure that all per­sons in­volved get a fair hear­ing and that the root cause of the prob­lem is de­ter­mined.”

Mark asked whether Im­bert was aware of a sim­i­lar emer­gency land­ing in­ci­dent in­volv­ing a CAL air­craft in Au­gust 2024. He al­so asked if CAL had tak­en any ac­tion to ad­dress that in­ci­dent and, giv­en the re­cur­rence on Mon­day, whether prop­er checks were be­ing con­duct­ed on all air­craft op­er­at­ing on the To­ba­go route.

Im­bert said, “No, I’m not aware (of the 2024 in­ci­dent). How­ev­er, I’ve been told that the pre­lim­i­nary in­for­ma­tion (on Mon­day’s in­ci­dent) is that there’s noth­ing wrong with the air­craft it­self. It was sim­ply the mea­sure­ment of the amount of fu­el that was in the tank. So there’s noth­ing wrong with the plane.

“I’m not aware of (last year’s in­ci­dent). Thank you for that in­for­ma­tion. Now that you’ve told me that there was an in­ci­dent with an air­craft last year, I’ll cer­tain­ly ask for de­tails with re­spect to that mat­ter. But I’m not aware of that mat­ter.”

Pi­lots union warns of grow­ing safe­ty risks at air­line

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Air­line Pi­lots’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA) has is­sued a stern warn­ing about grow­ing safe­ty con­cerns at Caribbean Air­lines (CAL).

In a me­dia state­ment, the as­so­ci­a­tion dis­closed it has been rais­ing alarms over risks linked to CAL’s ATR air­craft fleet for over a decade. 

TTAL­PA high­light­ed mul­ti­ple safe­ty-re­lat­ed near miss­es in re­cent months as a clear sig­nal for ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion.

While in­ves­ti­ga­tors are still de­ter­min­ing the cause of the lat­est in­ci­dent, TTAL­PA em­pha­sised it aligns with a trou­bling and per­sis­tent pat­tern.

The as­so­ci­a­tion not­ed that while it would be pre­ma­ture to spec­u­late on the specifics, the fre­quen­cy of such oc­cur­rences can­not be ig­nored. “This in­ci­dent is part of a broad­er trend that de­mands im­me­di­ate col­lab­o­ra­tion to safe­guard lives,” TTAL­PA stat­ed.

The as­so­ci­a­tion’s chair­man and coun­cil mem­bers have called for an emer­gency meet­ing with CAL’s lead­er­ship and avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tors to ad­dress con­cerns sur­round­ing op­er­a­tional pro­to­cols and main­te­nance prac­tices.

TTAL­PA stressed that the safe­ty of pas­sen­gers, crew, and avi­a­tion staff re­mains its “ut­most pri­or­i­ty,” urg­ing trans­paren­cy and sys­temic re­forms to pre­vent fu­ture emer­gen­cies.