By Marcelle Thomas
As their Air Services Limited plane took to the skies from the Ogle International Airport on Monday, Sheldon Williams and his wife Urmilla Rajesh laughed when the pilot asked another passenger at which airstrip she was supposed to land.
“When we were leaving Ogle it seemed as if there was a problem but she (the pilot) make one thing and take-off and
then the plane settle down good … the pilot I don’t know what happened but she turned to the man next to her and asked which airstrip she was to land if was at Matthews Ridge or Port Kaituma. I say to my wife ‘like this lady ain’t know where she going or what?’ and we laugh it off,” Williams, a gold miner, said.
He recounted dozing off and waking to look through his wife’s window and seeing the familiar territory of the area surrounding Matthews Ridge although it was through fog. Shortly after, he said, it seemed that they went into a cloud as the whole plane was encircled in “thick, thick fog” and the airstrip he had seen was replaced with “whiteness.”
Williams said that the plane began circling the airstrip and it did so four times and this concerned him. “I say boy like she ain’t seeing the strip good or something, like we in problems hay. After the fourth time me hear beep! beep! beep! beep! and the plane start to fall and she (the pilot) pressing this and pulling that quick, quick and then like she give up cause she seh ‘Oh God’ and I close meh eye and seh I dead,” he recalled.
Williams, 20, said that as the plane began falling he could hear the women screaming and he too, his eyes closed, began screaming. Then he heard a “blam” and felt the sharp impact of the plane crashing. He knew that they had crashed but realized that he was alive.
When he opened his eyes, the miner recalled, he saw the pilot Captain Feriel Ally’s face seemingly pasted on the dashboard of the plane and she was not moving. However, he said that his primary concern was getting himself and wife to safety because he felt that the plane would soon explode as fire was seen emanating from the front of the plane. “I didn’t know my foot de break I just wanted to get out because I see fire at the front and I know is (airplane) fuel we playing with and that is a man that quick to explode so I start fuh run…I get a short distance and collapse then pain take over and remember nothing much else…pain too much,” he recounted.
Williams explained that the plane crashed in an area about one-and-a-half-mile to two miles from the Matthew’s Ridge airstrip. He believes that the crash would have been worse but the plane was saved by vines which trapped its wings and prevented it from hitting the ground.
The injured were taken to the Matthew’s Ridge Hospital where they were given temporary care before being air-dashed to the city by a Trans Guyana Airways plane. They were then taken to different private hospitals in Georgetown as well as the Georgetown Public Hospital where they were told by ASL that their medical expenses would be taken care of.
Williams and Rajesh, 28, were sitting in the second row of the Cessna Caravan when it crashed. His leg was broken in three places and he has lacerations about his body and had to be hospitalized for several days. His wife’s face was crushed in multiple places and she remains a patient at a private city hospital undergoing reconstructive face surgery. The mother of five still complains of agonizing pain from her face, head and body and spontaneous bleeding from the nose.
Twelve persons, inclusive of Williams, Rajesh, Ally, Lloyd Thomas, Aluna Massay, Ulan Benjamin, Clinton Campbell, Troy Henry, Wesley Johnson, Nalinie Delon, Dexter Benjamin and Esther William were on board when the plane went down.
In interviews with Stabroek News, some of the passengers, while grateful to be alive, expressed concern at the airline’s treatment and the urgency with which ASL officials are trying to get them to sign waivers although they have not yet recovered from their injuries.
“A man named Jerry came with a paper and keep coming back for me to sign that they will pay me but I have to sign this form then after that is nothing? …the thing is he can’t say if when you sign, when you getting this money because he say he too don’t know…could be next month, next year or next ten years,” Williams said.
The miner and other passengers are annoyed that the airline’s main focus seemed to be getting them to sign the waivers. He said that while hospitalized, ASL personnel came with the forms for them to sign but he refused as he did not know the extent of his injury and what his recovery timeframe would be. “Jerry (the man who brought the form) come and he say I should sign I would get $667,000 but I couldn’t sign that because me ain’t know what happen to my foot, what would happen to me or nothing…I not a doctor and them not doctor so how they know that after six weeks I gon be ok,” he asserted.
Two brothers, Dexter, 42, and Ulan Benjamin, 29, also recounted the crash. They were seated together in the third row of the plane. Dexter’s face was bruised and he sustained cuts to his eye and head while his brother suffered lacerations about his body.
Dexter recounted that he was sleeping throughout the flight but was awoken by the beeping sound. He said he looked over to his side and saw a baby being nursed by its mother. After the crash, he said, he saw the mother unconscious and bleeding from the face. Her front teeth were missing and she seemed badly injured. However, he was shocked as the child had sustained no physical injuries. The child was hurled into the bushes during the crash but miraculously escaped with no injuries as she was cushioned by vines.
Ulan said that after the crash all he thought about was escaping but his brother, his face bleeding, kept asking for his bags. “We just crash and this man asking me fuh he bag. I tell he try deh wid bag, yuh better run because the plane gon blow up anytime and I run away from he …then like sense hit he and he start scattering behind me,” he said.
Both brothers signed the waivers, one for $64,800 and another for $350,000, as they believe that “something was better than nothing”. They said that in most instances when cases went through the court system, it would take a very long time before a decision is made. They said that they were not told when they will receive the money but are hoping that the airline lives up to its promise and they would not have to be “running up and down” for the money.
Another passenger Nalinie Delon, a businesswoman who owns a store at Matthew’s Ridge lamented her losses and medical expenses. She noted too that she had lost over $400 000 worth of goods in the crash. She recalled that just prior to the plane hurtling downward in a nosedive she had heard a loud “blam.” Delon opined that the pilot was “preoccupied” but she along with other passengers thought nothing of it. She said that she assisted Ally after the crash.
ASL’s General Manager Annette Arjoon-Martins would not comment on the crash saying that she did not want to say anything that would compromise the independent investigation that is currently being carried out by the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA). The pilot has also not spoken about the crash.
