(Trinidad Guardian) The passengers’ seats and other furnishings of CAL 523 were all intact despite last Saturday’s “crash” landing in Guyana, says T&T’s Direct of Civil Aviation Ramesh Lutchmedial. Lutchmedial is a member of the multidisciplinary team probing the issue. Lutchmedial, who heads Caricom’s Air Safety Board, had been in Guyana since last Wednesday on a conference. He arrived on the scene of the crash landing minutes after it happened around 1.32 on Saturday, he said in an interview yesterday. He and other local aviation experts are staying on in Guyana to complete the probe. “Based on what we’ve seem so far, it would be difficult to immediately say what happened and what caused the situation,” Lutchmedial said.
“You can’t blame the aircraft, you can’t blame the pilot and you can’t blame the runway, we just have to continue investigating it before forming any opinion.” He said the aircraft appeared to have held up well.
He said it was not “split in two” as initial reports had described it immediately after news broke on Saturday morning. Such a report had circulated around the US early on Saturday. Lutchmedial said the plane broke apart at one of its seams which is nearer the front segment. The break occurred at the area where the curtain usually hangs to separate the “First Class” area from “Economy,” Lutchmedial added.
He said he had already been inside the wreckage of the plane to inspect that aspect, and that the seats and other furnishing were intact and had not been destroyed, uprooted or bounced around with the impact of the landing. “Despite how it looked outside, the cabin was not a shambles,” Lutchmedial said.
He said Noel Elliot, the Guyanese man who sustained the most serious injury—a broken leg—did not sit in First Class where the break occurred. He said Elliot had been seated towards the back of the aircraft. Ironically, Lutchmedial noted, he had certified the aircraft when it was received three years ago. “The aircraft proved itself…it was a well-designed Boeing aircraft,” he added.
