Morris demands answers on US military plane in Tobago

Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine to come clean with To­bag­o­ni­ans af­ter a Unit­ed States Air Force C-17A Globe­mas­ter III mil­i­tary trans­port plane was seen and heard in To­ba­go ear­ly this morn­ing.

Mor­ris is­sued the state­ment af­ter res­i­dents across parts of To­ba­go West re­port­ed hear­ing the ex­treme­ly loud sound of a large air­craft just be­fore dawn. He said the pub­lic de­serves full and di­rect in­for­ma­tion about any for­eign mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty in­volv­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s air­ports or air­space at a time of ris­ing re­gion­al ten­sion. “This de­vel­op­ment is ex­treme­ly con­cern­ing. The Prime Min­is­ter and the Chief Sec­re­tary need to come clean and let us know what is go­ing on,” he said.

Flight-track­ing da­ta from Fligh­tradar24 con­firms that the Boe­ing C-17A Globe­mas­ter III, op­er­at­ing un­der the call sign RCH661 and car­ry­ing reg­is­tra­tion 99-0165, de­part­ed the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port at 5.53 am. The plat­form shows the air­craft climb­ing to 32,000 feet and trav­el­ling at rough­ly 435 knots be­fore turn­ing north and leav­ing To­ba­go.

The C-17 Globe­mas­ter III is one of the US mil­i­tary’s main heavy-lift trans­port air­craft. It is built to move large equip­ment, car­go and per­son­nel over long dis­tances and can op­er­ate from short­er run­ways when re­quired.

Fligh­tradar24 showed the air­craft be­ing tracked by more than 1,400 users world­wide short­ly af­ter take-off. The screen­shots al­so in­di­cate that its ar­rival des­ti­na­tion was list­ed as “N/A,” with no fur­ther flight in­for­ma­tion avail­able.

There has been no of­fi­cial state­ment from the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go or US au­thor­i­ties about why the air­craft was in To­ba­go or what it was car­ry­ing.

Mor­ris said the lack of in­for­ma­tion is un­ac­cept­able and again urged the Prime Min­is­ter to speak di­rect­ly to the pub­lic about the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the C-17’s vis­it this morn­ing.