FAA downgrades Trinidad/Tobago over air oversight

[DISCOKID]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- U.S. aviation regulators cited Trinidad and Tobago Thursday for failing to comply with international standards for oversight of its aviation sector.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it was downgrading Trinidad and Tobago to a Category 2 rating from Category 1 after a reassessment of the country's civil aviation authority found it fell short of standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization.

The FAA said the government of Trinidad and Tobago had indicated a desire to correct the matters identified in the FAA review.

When a country is in Category 2 status, its airlines are allowed to continue flying to the United States under heightened FAA surveillance but are prohibited from adding new service

[The Guvnor]

As I understand it, this is due to a combination of factors:

1) Air Caribbean (now gone) which due to political connections, was able to get away with far too much;

2) The current crisis at BWIA as far as technical support is concerned - they fired a large number of their technicians on the basis that they were getting rid of their L1011s - however they appear not to have taken into consideration the fact that they still have to maintain the ones they have!

3) The rather questionable practices of BWIA's CEO, Conrad Aleong, of putting crew members under "house arrest" and removing an aircraft's CVR.

Clearly, management changes at the top of BWIA would probably do a lot to restore Trini's Cat 1 rating.

[SunSeaSandfly]

I believe the basic problem is that the long awaited revised legislation to replace the old UK-style Air Navigation Order was virtually laughed out of the Senate because of discrepancies and contradictions. This was probably contributed to by the need to meet the ICAO deadline and the consequent rush to print.

The local paper glosses over this as you can see.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/busstory4.html

The collateral damage will be that BWIA will probably not be able to start it's new ATL and HOU services as planned with consequent loss of utilisation of its new 737-800s.
This will affect fleet planning and as well as the bottom line.


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fly low, bite hard