Tobago airport terminal fully certified, ready for opening

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port’s new ter­mi­nal build­ing has been ful­ly cer­ti­fied for op­er­a­tions, with of­fi­cials yes­ter­day re­ceiv­ing the doc­u­ments re­quired to for­mal­ly com­mis­sion the fa­cil­i­ty.

The Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture hand­ed over the cer­tifi­cates to Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Eli Za­k­our, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny at the air­port in Crown Point.

In a me­dia re­lease, the min­istry said the ter­mi­nal holds in­ter­na­tion­al avi­a­tion, safe­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, in­clud­ing two Lead­er­ship in En­er­gy and En­vi­ron­men­tal De­sign cer­ti­fi­ca­tions from the US Green Build­ing Coun­cil. It added that it has al­so ac­quired com­pli­ance cer­ti­fi­ca­tions un­der In­ter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port As­so­ci­a­tion, In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Or­gan­i­sa­tion and Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion frame­works, giv­ing the le­gal green light to op­er­ate.

The cer­tifi­cates were ac­com­pa­nied by con­trac­tor and man­u­fac­tur­er war­ranties cov­er­ing all prin­ci­pal build­ing sys­tems and op­er­at­ing man­u­als pre­scrib­ing the main­te­nance, safe­ty and op­er­a­tional pro­ce­dures re­quired for the day-to-day man­age­ment of the ter­mi­nal.

Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John said, “What is trans­ferred to­day is a cer­ti­fied, com­mis­sioned and ful­ly doc­u­ment­ed ter­mi­nal build­ing. The cer­ti­fi­ca­tions are its le­gal au­thor­i­ty to op­er­ate, the war­ranties pro­tect the pub­lic’s in­vest­ment, and the op­er­at­ing man­u­als must guide every main­te­nance de­ci­sion from this day for­ward.”

There was a prac­ti­cal open­ing of the air­port in March last year, with ex-fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert pre­dict­ing the ter­mi­nal would be ful­ly op­er­a­tional by Ju­ly 2025. How­ev­er, the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NID­CO) said an ex­ten­sive pro­gramme of works was un­der­tak­en to bring the fa­cil­i­ty to op­er­a­tional readi­ness.

Among the works done in­clud­ed: com­ple­tion of taxi­way as­phalt pave­ment; in­stal­la­tion and com­mis­sion­ing of the air­field light­ing sys­tem; in­te­gra­tion of the Con­stant Cur­rent Reg­u­la­tor with the Air Traf­fic Con­trol Tow­er; me­chan­i­cal, elec­tri­cal and plumb­ing sys­tems test­ing and com­mis­sion­ing; bag­gage han­dling and se­cu­ri­ty in­spec­tion equip­ment com­mis­sion­ing; and op­er­a­tional readi­ness, ac­ti­va­tion and tran­si­tion (ORAT) pro­gramme fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Mu­nich Air­port In­ter­na­tion­al.

The ORAT pro­gramme brought to­geth­er op­er­a­tional stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty, Im­mi­gra­tion, Cus­toms, the po­lice ser­vice, the fire ser­vice, Port Health, Swis­s­port, Caribbean Air­lines and Plant Quar­an­tine to de­vel­op stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures, con­duct staff train­ing and car­ry out func­tion­al tri­als in prepa­ra­tion for the open­ing of the ter­mi­nal.

“The com­ple­tion of this process rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant step to­ward the ac­ti­va­tion and op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of a mod­ern in­ter­na­tion­al avi­a­tion fa­cil­i­ty in ser­vice of To­ba­go’s long-term eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment,” the re­lease said.

The air­port has a ca­pac­i­ty to ac­com­mo­date three mil­lion pas­sen­gers an­nu­al­ly, but that lev­el of traf­fic is un­like­ly ow­ing to a con­sis­tent de­cline in tourist ar­rivals.

Au­gus­tine has re­peat­ed­ly stressed the im­por­tance of four- and five-star ho­tels on the is­land to at­tract a cer­tain stan­dard of vis­i­tors to help dri­ve the tourism prod­uct.

He re­cent­ly not­ed the ter­mi­nal would need to be built out with con­ces­sion­aires pro­vid­ing food, liquor and oth­er items for trav­ellers.

In March, Au­gus­tine hint­ed at a grand open­ing for the air­port to co­in­cide with the is­land’s an­nu­al Oc­to­ber car­ni­val.

Row­ley: Gov­ern­ment

play­ing games

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of “play­ing games” in its at­tempt to “take cred­it” for the project.

Row­ley be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment has de­lib­er­ate­ly de­layed the open­ing, which he be­lieves could have been ready by June 2025.

In a What­sApp mes­sage to Guardian Me­dia, Row­ley said, “The el­e­va­tors were in and work­ing. The gates to the planes were in and work­ing. Tech­ni­cal equip­ment for tick­et­ing and var­i­ous se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures were in and op­er­a­tional.”

He said the on­ly out­stand­ing mat­ter was con­nect­ing the fu­el line from the old fa­cil­i­ty to the new one through the al­ready ap­proved un­der­ground tun­nelling. 

“Games can now be played and lies told to take cred­it, but facts don’t dis­ap­pear be­cause some­one says oth­er­wise.”

PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil leader Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis de­scribed the air­port as a gamechang­er for To­ba­go, adding it was a gen­er­a­tion-long goal de­liv­ered by the PNM.

She too queried why it could not have been opened soon­er.

“This air­port was built; the con­struc­tion part, we would have al­ready done a cer­e­mo­ny for that. The air­port was kept closed for a whole year.”

The ex-To­ba­go West MP ac­cused the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion of pri­ori­tis­ing the hous­ing of the US mil­i­tary-grade radar at the air­port in­stead of try­ing to open it.

She added that the PNM had plans for mul­ti­ple lux­u­ry re­sorts on the is­land to at­tract vis­i­tors.

“It was not sup­posed to be an air­port on­ly. It should have been an air­port ac­com­pa­nied by the San­dals ho­tel and the Mar­riott at Rocky Point. Here we are — no San­dals and the Rocky Point fight­ing up.”

The ex-tourism min­is­ter said ar­rivals on the is­land have fall­en dras­ti­cal­ly over the years and urged the au­thor­i­ties to ex­e­cute a prop­er plan.