CIJA air traffic controller in runway incursion still on leave

Last Updated on Sunday, 11 May 2025, 19:30 by Writer

The air traffic controller (ATC), who was implicated in the runway incursion of a domestic aircraft at the same time that a Caribbean Airlines flight was arriving at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA), remains on administrative leave, well-placed sources said.

The incident report has yet to be finalised, but sources said it is unimpressive and not in her favour.

The pilots of the Roraima Airways Britten-Norman Islander plane were not found culpable and were given the green light to fly again.

They were initially grounded as part of the investigations by the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA).

Sources said that as part of the investigations, the airline submitted its real-time tracking of the actual movement of the aircraft on the runway.

One of the pilots also gave his account of what transpired in an interview with the GCAA investigators in the presence of the air traffic controller.

The incident occurred on March 31, 2025.

At that time, GCAA Director-General Retired Lt. Col. Egbert Field had said on April 1 that one aircraft was taxiing and the other was about to land.

“It is good that one aircraft stopped well short of the other aircraft while it was on the runway,” he had said then.

The ATC had been blamed by one source for instructing the CAL Boeing 737 Max to land while the Roraima Airways’ Britten Norman Islander was still on the runway moving at possibly 15 knots per hour.

The passenger jet possibly touched down at a speed of approximately 500 knots per hour, a source said.

Backed up by a reading from a Garmin GPS in the cockpit of the Islander, the source said that plane never turned off the main runway to an unused runway.

The image according to the source, shows a slight curve in the line indicating an attempt to turn off the main runway but the area was very dark that the unused runway was not seen.