In­cum­bent Point Fortin MP Kennedy Richards Jr says the rerout­ing of flights ar­riv­ing at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port to To­ba­go, fol­low­ing yes­ter­day’s Amer­i­jet ware­house fire, shows the ef­fec­tive­ness of the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty and air­line safe­ty pro­to­cols.

Richards apol­o­gised to Point Fortin res­i­dents for his late ar­rival at the Techi­er Vil­lage Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre yes­ter­day, where he joined Min­is­ter of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Has­sel Bac­chus to open an ICT Ac­cess Cen­tre. He ex­plained that his de­lay was due to the fire at Amer­i­jet’s fa­cil­i­ty in the air­port’s South Ter­mi­nal, which re­sult­ed in the tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of all flights.

The Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty had ear­li­er con­firmed that the in­ci­dent trig­gered an im­me­di­ate re­sponse from the Pi­ar­co Fire Sta­tion, sup­port­ed by units from the Ari­ma Fire Sta­tion.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Richards Jr, a Caribbean Air­lines pi­lot, said he was a pas­sen­ger aboard flight BW551 on a re­turn jour­ney from New York to Trinidad yes­ter­day morn­ing. He ex­plained that the flight, ap­proach­ing Pi­ar­co short­ly be­fore 7 am, had to hold off from land­ing due to the fire.

“You can­not land with the fire ser­vices fight­ing that fire at that point in time, so we have to fol­low what­ev­er pro­to­col was set up at that time. It is not on­ly smoke; when you are land­ing, the emer­gency ser­vices have to be read­i­ly avail­able, should some­thing hap­pen dur­ing land­ing. You see what took place in Toron­to a cou­ple of weeks ago when the plane went on its back—the emer­gency ser­vices were read­i­ly avail­able, and no one died. “They can­not be fight­ing a fire and won­der­ing what hap­pens when planes land, so they had to sort them­selves out be­fore planes were able to land,” Richards Jr ex­plained.

He added that the flight was even­tu­al­ly rerout­ed to the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Crown Point around 8 am be­cause land­ing at Pi­ar­co was im­pos­si­ble while emer­gency re­spon­ders were fight­ing the fire. Richards Jr not­ed that the avi­a­tion in­dus­try is high­ly reg­u­lat­ed to en­sure safe­ty.

The crew and pas­sen­gers re­mained on board the plane un­til re­ceiv­ing clear­ance to re­turn to Pi­ar­co around 10 am. He not­ed that the cap­tain spoke to pas­sen­gers, who man­aged the in­con­ve­nience well, un­der­stand­ing the sit­u­a­tion was be­yond the air­line and crew’s con­trol.

As a pi­lot for the past 13 years, Richards Jr re­called en­coun­ter­ing a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion where an air­craft was dis­abled on the run­way, forc­ing a flight to be rerout­ed to To­ba­go. How­ev­er, he said that the wait on that oc­ca­sion was short­er.

“At Caribbean Air­lines, safe­ty is the num­ber one pri­or­i­ty. All those things are cov­ered in our train­ing, and we deal with sit­u­a­tions as they arise.”

He said there were four or five flights ground­ed dur­ing the in­ci­dent, but they were man­aged seam­less­ly.

“It was a seam­less process.”