…law men dispatched to area to probe reports

FOLLOWING reports that several aircraft have been seen landing at an illegal airstrip near Parabara in the South Rupununi, a law-enforcement team has been dispatched to the area to carry out an investigation.
According to reports from the area, on several occasions in recent months, aircraft were seen circling and later landing in the Parabara savannah, south of Lumid Pau. Region Nine Chairman Bryan Allicock, confirmed on Monday that a team which included Guyana Defence Force (GDF) ranks travelled to the location on Friday to investigate the reports. He said that the team was expected to return to Lethem on Wednesday. “We got messages from the area that aircraft were seen overflying there,” Allicock said.
An aviation source confirmed that there have been several reports of aircraft landing near Parabara and reports from the ground indicate that the planes usually spend a very short time on the ground before taking off. Over the weekend , this newspaper was told that air traffic services at the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) was in receipt of a report of an unidentified aircraft which was spotted overhead in Region Eight (Potaro/Siparuni) several days ago.
Reports are that a female pilot attached to a domestic airline at Ogle was flying from the Kaieteur Falls airstrip to the coastland, when she observed an aircraft overhead. The sighting raised an alarm, since air traffic control had no knowledge of any additional traffic in the vicinity. The country’s hinterland has been in the spotlight in recent months following the discovery of several illegal aircraft on illegitimate runways constructed in the Rupununi. The most recent incident involved a Beechcraft King Air luxury plane bearing registration PR-IMC, which was discovered abandoned on an illegal airstrip in the North Rupununi. Two persons have been placed before the courts in connection with that incident.
The discovery came shortly after an illegal airstrip was found near the Santa Fe farms in the area.
On September 13 last year, a plane which was registered in Colombia was discovered near the village of Yupukari. Reports had also indicated that the area where the aircraft was found was on the radar in relation to the illegal drug-trafficking trade.
There were also reports that the abandoned aircraft had previously been sighted circling the area on numerous occasions in the past. The plane bore registration number N767Z, and it was later revealed by Minister of State Joseph Harmon, that the United States registration was bogus, since there is another active aircraft in the U.S. with the same registration number. Residents had found the plane almost one month before an official report was made to authorities, according to the preliminary findings of a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) by Brigadier (Ret’d) Edward Collins.
The CoI report of Collins found that the state’s aviation authority is in no position to locate illegal aircraft within the country’s territory, despite the use of the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) which the aviation industry had adopted some two years ago.
The ADS-B system requires communication between the ground team and the pilot to ensure the operation of the system. Unless the pilot activates his system and communicates with the ground crew, the system is useless.