New Director General of GCAA hoping to bring the country closer to having a national airline

Newly appointed Director General of the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), boasting 30 years experience in the aviation sector is hoping to bring back a national carrier to Guyana.

Speaking to the media on Tuesday, Former Director of Flight Safety of the Jamaica Civil Aviation Authority, Captain Egbert Field noted that he will be striving to make Guyana compliant with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards.

“The GCAA will be going into an audit where the ICAO representatives will be coming down to assess our compliance. Gaining category one will open up Guyana to airlines starting up and basing themselves in Guyana so that they will have the opportunity to fly to North America. At the moment, no airline that is based in Guyana and registered in Guyana will have the ability to go to North America; strictly because we are in category two,” Field noted.

Field who also served former Guyana Airways said, “I know what I can do for this industry and we may have a return to a Guyana airways with the attainment of Category one.” (Category one is the achievement of the first step towards being compliant with ICAO.)

Bringing his wealth of experience to the local aviation sector, he hopes will help the country meet its ICAO standards.

Asked whether he believes that the country has the requisite resources to efficiently support the sector, Field said the GCAA under his watch will be looking at new methods to attract experienced persons to the sector.

“The attraction of personnel to the industry is a problem, we have to compete with the commercial enterprises and you know the commercial enterprises, they pay more so we will have to be very crafty in our payment package to not only include salaries but benefits; things that would attract people to come.  We will also be outlining to them that…as a pilot where you have to retire at 65, you will be able to return in the Civil Aviation Authority to 70 or 70+ because we deal with experience” he said, while noting the experience is key to proper oversight of the rest of the commercial activities.

He noted that the local industry is thriving and sees it becoming busier with the recent oil find.

“We have to look at the wider variety; with the oil industry on the verge of taking off, we can expect that there will be a lot more traffic into Guyana. And the Civil aviation authority must be the one to blaze this trail to places we would have never expected to go before” Field said.

Egbert Field was a part of the Jamaican Civil Aviation Authority for a number of years; working his way up from an Inspector to the Director of flight safety. He is also a Transnational Inspector with the Caribbean Aviation Safety Oversight System in which capacity he also assisted Guyana regularly with their inspection