No distress call from Pilot before fatal accident- GCAA

The Guyana Civil Aviation Authority is looking at various factors as it seeks to determine to cause of two recent aircraft accidents which occurred in Region Seven.

Director General of the GCAA, Egbert Field says the equipment, weather conditions and human factors involved, are being looked at. “We have secured the engines for the first accident. That should be shipped out to the manufacturers –and all this is part of the investigations. The last accident a few days ago, the inspector is now at that location securing the engine to ship it out to Georgetown for further transportation to the manufacturers,” he explained.

The Director General ruled out the age of the aircraft as a contributing factor, noting that the aircraft are inspected once per year.

He said however, one of the major concerns is the maintenance of the domestic aircraft but neither of the handlers have had issues in the past.

“Any non-compliance issue can cause the revocation their document or authorization. We’ve had no cause to do that. There have been minor infringements, but not things that we would consider to be items to endanger the safety of the aircraft –they have some paperwork where there may either be inaccurate information placed in the paperwork,” Field disclosed.

One aircraft crashed as it was landing at the Eteringbang airstrip in Region Seven on July 25, claiming the life of 39-year-old Colin Winston Martin. According to Fields, the pilot who was employed by Roraima Airways did not make any distress calls before the accident.

“I can’t remember hearing, even off the record that him mentioning anything, maybe other than saying that he’s preparing to land Eteringbang,” the Director General told media operatives.

Another aircraft owned by Wings Aviation crashed as it was taking off from Eteringbang, in Region Seven last Tuesday (August 08, 2017).

The aircraft was piloted by Dominic Waddell, who escaped with minor injuries.