Zakour: T&T in regional search for missing plane

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

A pri­vate air­craft that left St Vin­cent and the Grenadines en route to To­ba­go on Fri­day has gone miss­ing, prompt­ing a re­gion­al search and res­cue op­er­a­tion in­volv­ing mul­ti­ple agen­cies.

Min­is­ter of Civ­il Avi­a­tion Eli Za­k­our yes­ter­day con­firmed that lo­cal au­thor­i­ties are aware of the sit­u­a­tion and have ac­ti­vat­ed emer­gency pro­to­cols.

“The Pi­ar­co Area Con­trol Cen­tre ac­ti­vat­ed its emer­gency and search and res­cue pro­to­cols, with all avail­able ground sta­tions and air­craft at­tempt­ing to make ei­ther vi­su­al or voice con­tact with the air­craft,” he said.

Za­k­our said the Coast Guard has been en­gaged, along with oth­er re­gion­al search-and-res­cue agen­cies.

“Both pri­vate and mil­i­tary air­craft have vi­su­al­ly searched the area around the last known po­si­tion of the air­craft,” he added.

How­ev­er, he con­firmed there has been no con­tact with the air­craft and noth­ing has been found to in­di­cate its last lo­ca­tion. Za­k­our said search ef­forts will con­tin­ue.

“This re­mains the high­est pri­or­i­ty, and all ef­forts be­tween re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices and air traf­fic ser­vices to pos­i­tive­ly de­ter­mine the where­abouts of the air­craft con­tin­ue in earnest.”

The plane de­part­ed Ar­gyle In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port around 11.52 am with two peo­ple aboard, des­tined for ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Crown Point.

Con­tact was lost around 12.11 pm as it flew south of St Vin­cent air­space, and it nev­er ar­rived in To­ba­go.

A source at Air Traf­fic Con­trol in Trinidad and To­ba­go con­firmed the sit­u­a­tion, say­ing Ar­gyle au­thor­i­ties alert­ed coun­ter­parts in Pi­ar­co af­ter los­ing con­tact.

Pi­lots in the area were asked to be on the look­out for any signs of a crash or oil spill.

The air­craft was re­port­ed­ly fly­ing un­der vi­su­al flight rules (VFR) be­low 4,000 feet when con­tact was lost.

Fligh­tradar24 da­ta showed the air­craft, reg­is­tra­tion HI1145, a Beech 58P Pres­surised Baron, de­part­ed St Vin­cent with its des­ti­na­tion un­list­ed.

It was fly­ing at 4,025 feet and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 142 knots when its transpon­der stopped trans­mit­ting.

The air­craft had made sev­er­al do­mes­tic trips be­tween Canouan Air­port and Ar­gyle In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port be­tween Wednes­day and Fri­day.

Jour­nal­ists in St Vin­cent re­port­ed that air­port au­thor­i­ties were ini­tial­ly tight-lipped, with con­fir­ma­tion on­ly emerg­ing af­ter me­dia in­quiries on Sat­ur­day that the air­craft could not be ac­count­ed for.

For­mer head of civ­il avi­a­tion Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al said he was aware of the sit­u­a­tion but had lim­it­ed de­tails.

“All I know is the air­craft, close to Grena­da, made a turn to the south­east and the transpon­der, which al­lows them to track the air­craft, was switched off. So they lost all sig­nal from the air­plane,” he said.

He ex­plained that while transpon­ders can­not be switched off in large com­mer­cial air­craft, it is pos­si­ble in small­er mod­els.

“In some small air­craft, you could switch it off by pulling the cir­cuit break­er. It is pos­si­ble.”

He added that while such in­ci­dents are rare, in small air­craft they can some­times in­volve de­lib­er­ate ac­tion.

Asked whether the sit­u­a­tion should alarm the pub­lic, he said: “Not re­al­ly, it is some­thing that would gain the at­ten­tion cer­tain­ly of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials, not just here in Trinidad but in the oth­er is­lands.”