Roraima pilot suspended over Eccles crash-landing
-airline facing penalties
A Roraima Airways pilot has been suspended and the domestic airline is facing penalties for breaching aviation regulations in the Britten-Norman Trislander crash-landing at Eccles, East Bank Demerara last August.
Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) Director General, Lieutenant Colonel (Ret’d) Egbert Field during the Ministry of Public Works’ year-inreview press conference yesterday disclosed that the sanctions were imposed following recommendations from their investigations.
“Recommendations put forward in the Haags Bosch crash-landing will see penalties being applied to the operators and the pilot involved….Those penalties have been activated and the pilot is now in suspension for that accident for a particular period,” Field related. He did not disclose the length of the suspension or the name of the pilot.
Field made the disclosure in response to questions raised by Stabroek News. He noted that while most of the investigations have been completed locally they are awaiting international verification of the findings.
Last evening, Captain Gerry Gouveia, proprietor of Roraima Airways said his company fully supports the measures implemented by the GCAA. He noted that while he is no longer at the helm of the day-to-day operations, he believes the measures will mitigate and prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future. On that note he emphasised that “we are fully supportive of the measures.”
At the press conference, Minister of Public Works Juan Edghill interjected that he has already appointed the incident/accident investigator to conduct their own independent probe. He noted that in this probe they will be seeking explanations from the manufacturers of the aircraft and parts to determine what the contributing factor to fuel starvation was and why that occurred.
Both Field and Edghill had disclosed that the preliminary investigation had found that fuel starvation was the main contributing factor to the crash-landing.
In August, Gouveia had said that checks showed that the aircraft had about 40 minutes of fuel left.
Fuel starvation is described as the failure of the fuel system to supply adequate fuel to allow the engine to run properly, for example due to blockage, malfunction of the pump or a vapour lock, leading to loss of power or engine stoppage.
The plane crash-landed in the vicinity of the Haags Bosch landfill facility on the East Bank of Demerara, raising concerns about what might have gone wrong and the extremely close shave for the two crew and three passengers, one of whom sustained injuries. There were two adult passengers and a two-year-old child.
The aircraft was forced to crash-land in a swamplike area after it reportedly experienced difficulties. The crash-landing of the Britten-Norman Trislander bearing registration No. 8R GRE occurred at around 11.30 am as the aircraft was en route to the Eugene F. Correia International Airport, Ogle. It had departed Imbaimadai in Region Seven around 10.20 am.