Tobago flights delayed for two hours

AT NO time were passengers’ lives in danger aboard a flight to Tobago on Monday morning, Dionne Ligoure, head of corporate communications Caribbean Airlines, said yesterday. She dismissed allegations made by PSA president Watson Duke. In a brief telephone interview yesterday, Ligoure said none of the aircraft was started while passengers were on board.

“I want to make it very clear that safety is the number-one priority of Caribbean Airlines and a technical issue caused a two-hour delay. At no time was anyone in any kind of danger, no time at all.” Ligoure said the airline industry is one of the most highly regulated industries in the world, and before pilots and flight attendants board an aircraft, a pre-flight check has to be done.

“When a driver can jump in a car and drive off, pilots and flight attendants don’t have that luxury. In doing their flight checks, it was determined that there was an issue. The operation team said they would move the passengers onto another aircraft. When they did another set of checks, they also determined (that) flight would have to be delayed because they were not satisfied with their checks. None of the aircraft were started while passengers were on board the aircraft.”

On Facebook yesterday, Duke
posted a ‘live’ video informing the public there was danger aboard another ATR plane. “We have now boarded the second ATR and they are telling us there are problems with this flight,” he said. “I’m happy that the pilot did detect that something was wrong before we got in the sky.” Newsday tried to contact Duke, but several calls to
his cell phone went unanswered.