…says President Jagdeo
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) — President Bharrat Jagdeo said a preliminary report by the US-based National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) into the July 30 crash landing of a Caribbean Airlines (CAL) aircraft at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA) will be made public shortly. But Jagdeo has already brushed aside media and other reports that the airport conditions in his country were far from international standards when flight BW523 with 154 passengers and eight crew members aboard overshot the runway, breaking into two parts.
The plane had earlier picked up passengers from New York, Florida and Port of Spain and the crash occurred around 01:25 hrs (local time). There were no deaths.
“I don’t want to go into details of the report, but it had nothing to do with the airport being too dark, which I have seen, the runway being too short, that there were rainy conditions and the visibility was poor,” Jagdeo told local television here.
“I have heard in some sections of the media that there are safety issues at our airport. Planes have been landing there for the past 70 years and we have never had any such situation,” he said, adding that “bigger planes have landed there, the L10-11 has landed in Guyana frequently and safely”.
Jagdeo said that visibility at the airport at the time of the incident was well beyond what was necessary for pilots to safely land an aircraft.

Jagdeo said he would not, as a politician, release the preliminary report, leaving it instead to the technical people.
“I will allow the technical people to put out the report but I just wanted to correct that impression which I see has been peddled widely in the Trinidad media,” he added.