By Miranda La Rose
The local aviation industry needs to improve its ridership in and out of Guyana with the growth in all sectors of the economy on account of the burgeoning of the oil and gas industry and to court more airlines Guyana needs to send its ambassadors to meetings and conferences to network, says Lt Col (ret’d) Egbert Field, Director General (DG), Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA).
“Guyana needs more airlines to meet growing demands and networking is the key,” Field told Stabroek Weekend. Field has piloted the GCAA over the past six years from a below average compliance of 44 per cent to an above average compliance of 77 per cent in keeping with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) regulations. “We are moving towards full ICAO compliance.”
He has over 52 years of experience in the aviation industry and is a check airman, examiner and certified ICAO instructor.
Guyana’s reputation in the aviation industry is growing, he said, noting, “Guyana now leads with the highest index for safety oversight capability in the 35 states of the Americas and the Caribbean.”
Even before he returned from Jamaica, where he spent 12 years with the Jamaica Civil Aviation Authority (JCAA), he assisted the GCAA with oversight inspections, returning to Guyana two or three times a year.
In 2002, Field was the first operations inspector at the GCAA and when he left Guyana in 2004 no one replaced him. “Through the Caribbean Aviation Safety and Security Oversight System (CASSOS), the GCAA requested my services to do inspections or test pilots’ flights.”
Field, now a board member of CASSOS, was the transnational inspector of CASSOS which assisted Caribbean countries, including Guyana, with oversight of air operators and shared resources with states that need support and training.
On his return in 2016, he warned that with the burgeoning of the oil and gas industry, an aviation tsunami was heading towards Guyana.
“Since then, flights have increased tremendously. Ogle is one of the busiest airports in the Caribbean. It is not an easy thing to keep safety and security in the aviation industry at its peak. Last August, in Montreal at the ICAO assembly, the ICAO Secretary General said, the organisation was using Guyana’s aviation industry as a template for the Caribbean because of the direction and successes we have taken and achieved.”
Ensuring that inspectors are well trained and all departments of the GCAA give of their best, he said, “We are number one when it comes to safety oversight capability in the Americas and the Caribbean. It isn’t easy to accomplish such feats. It is a very stressful keeping aviation at a safe level because it is a 24/7 operation.”
‘I went and I conquered’
Born in a logie at Meadowbank Main Road, on December 12, 1951 to a cabinet maker and a housewife, Field is the fifth of six siblings.
In his early years he joined the Cub Scouts, which he thinks gave him an early start in leadership. In the 2000s he was deputy commissioner for the Guyana Scouts Association
At Meadowbank, the Fields lived close to the Demerara River. “In those days the British Guiana Airways Corporation occupied The Ramp at Ruimveldt, now the Coast Guard Unit. They flew the Grumman aircraft (a seaplane). I was about five or six years when the Grumman aircraft landed in the Demerara River. Hearing the engines, called coal pot engines, approaching the river for landing, I would get away from home, run up the road to the sugar bulker entrance about 300 or 400 yards away and head down to The Ramp to see this aircraft sailing in from the river and climbing up the ramp into the hangar.”
The Grumman aircraft is a taildragger landing plane with a small wheel at the back and two big wheels in front. The cockpit was higher than the tail.
“The two men in the cockpit with their white shirts and epaulettes, were like gods to me. That captured my interest initially in aeroplanes and flying.”
Field attended then Houston Methodist Primary until he was 11 years, when he wrote the entrance exams for Chatham High School, which later became Alleyne’s High, on Regent Street.
At Chatham’s High he kept flying as a career at the back of his mind. “As I got older and good sense prevailed, I realised aviation would be so expensive and I couldn’t be like one of those guys in the cockpit.” At about 15 years he thought about becoming an economist.
After writing GCE ‘O’ Levels at Chatham’s High, he went on to the Indian Educational Trust College, now Richard Ishmael Secondary, to write GCE ‘A’ Levels.
After he sat the GCE ‘A’ Levels the government advertised scholarships for pilots, Field applied and was successful. In 1970, at 18 years, he was at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, where he obtained his commercial pilot licence with instrument and multi-engine ratings.
“When I was selected to go to flight school, my mom did not want me to become a pilot. She said my son is going to crash. My dad told her if this is what he wants to do, let him do it. I went and I conquered. When I came back, my mom was so proud she told everyone she met in Meadowbank, ‘My son is a pilot.’”
On their return from Florida, the newly trained pilots were supposed to be absorbed into the Guyana Airways Corporation (GAC) but there were no vacancies. “It was decided we should proceed into the military. I got a call to report to then police commissioner, Carl Austin. The police had one aircraft and they had requested I join the Guyana Police Force as their pilot. I don’t know if after the interview the amount of money I told him I expected to receive had deterred him but I never heard from Commissioner Austin again. Not until a few months later I got a call to report to the Guyana Defence Force (GDF).”
Military service
In 1972 he joined the GDF as an officer cadet to eventually retire as a lieutenant colonel in 1996. “My experience in the army increased tremendously with the responsibilities thrusted on me. I don’t think there is any organisation that could make a youth into a man overnight like the GDF.”
In his 23 years at the air corps of the GDF he served as officer- in-charge (fixed wing), training and check pilot. He was the executive pilot to three presidents, Forbes Burnham, Desmond Hoyte and Dr Cheddi Jagan, for 13 years. He was also an advisor to the chiefs of staff on aviation matters.
Before retiring from the GDF, he joined the Guyana Airways Corporation (GAC), where he was the pilot for various aircraft and served in various positions.
After being trained in the United Kingdom as an instrument and type rating examiner, he was designated a check airman for the then Civil Aviation Department in 1992.
After GAC closed in 2000 and Guyana Airways 2000 came into being, he continued working with the new company as chief pilot/director of operations and recruited a number of the old pilots to continue flying with GA 2000. That lasted just about a year or two years before it folded. “I was the first Guyanese Captain of the GAC Boeing 757 aircraft.”
Field has over 18,000 flight hours and is qualified on a number of aircraft including the Beech King Air 200, Skyvan, Y-12, Hawker Siddley 748, the Russian made Tupolev 154, Airbus 320/321, and the Boeing 707 and Boeing 757/767.
For long and exceptional service in aviation as a military and commercial pilot and as an administrator in regulatory aviation, Field was awarded the Golden Arrow of Achievement.
Field believes the medivac flights he did in the dark of night in the interior with Captain Gerry Gouveia while they were in the army made Gouveia a specialist in medivacs.
“He was one of the young pilots I called at nights when I had a flight and needed somebody. Night flying was part of my joy trying to save lives. Gerry was my first officer until he acquired the experience to go on his own.”
In manoeuvring while landing on small and difficult runways, Field recalls almost running through the bushes at Kurutuku airstrip in Region 7 with Major General Joe Singh sitting in the back of an Islander. “It is said that as long as you fly you will have incidents and accidents.”
An accident he tried to forget was on the Lethem Airstrip in the 1980s flying the Hawker Sidley 748 as the command pilot along with the late Tony Austin. “When we tried to land, cows were on the airstrip. When we landed the wheels were not down. It wasn’t until 2017, some 30 plus years, I found out the warning system did not alert us the wheels were not down because of a modification done in the hangar the day before the flight.”
Regulator
In 2002, Field moved to the regulatory side of aviation with the GCAA.
As a senior civil aviation authority inspector he was coursed in among a number of areas, air operations, accident investigation, audit procedures, enforcement and compliance, approved examiner, air operator certification, safety management systems, evaluation of aviation management systems and senior civil aviation authority management at leading international organisations, including the US Federal Aviation Authority Academy, ICAO, the National Transportation Safety Board, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, the National University of Singapore and the University of Southern California.
He joined the GCAA when it was still the Civil Aviation Department.
“During that time, the GCAA had myself and two air worthiness inspectors to certify air operators. It is a process that has about five phases and could last as long as five to six months for small aircraft operators and a year to 18 months for large jet operators. I was the only operations inspector who dealt with the pilots and the operations of the aircraft. The maintenance aspect was done by the airworthiness inspectors. After looking at all facets of the operators we certified eight operators that were in existence at the time. They included Trans Guyana Airways, Roraima Airways, Air Services Limited and the GDF.
In 2004, he moved to New Jersey, USA. While in New Jersey, awaiting replies to applications for pilot positions, the DG, Jamaica Civil Aviation Authority (JCAA), invited him to discuss an offer to work in Jamaica. “The first question the DG asked me in the presence of his deputy and others was, ‘Col Field, how could the Guyana government allow you to leave knowing that persons with your experience and qualifications are in such short supply in the Caribbean? I said, ‘I don’t know.’”
He was given the position of principal operations inspector with oversight for Air Jamaica. “This was when Air Jamaica existed and had about 26 Airbuses flying from Jamaica to a number of airports in the US. I told him I don’t fly the Airbus.”
As soon as he accepted the offer he was sent to Europe to retrain on the Airbus. He returned home in 2016 at the Guyana Government’s invitation to head the GCAA.
He joined the JCAA in 2004 and held various positions, including principal operations inspector with responsibility for the oversight of Air Jamaica Limited, manager, Flight Operations Oversight and director, Flight Safety Department.
Workwise, he said, his time in Jamaica was good but health-wise he faced challenges as he was diagnosed with both non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and prostate cancer. He underwent treatment that included chemotherapy in New Jersey, USA. “Thank God I lived through those.”
The Haitian experience, tributes
In January, 2010, Field and DGs and their deputies from the Caribbean travelled to Haiti for a CASSOS meeting.
“Some had landed on the morning flight out of Miami. I was in the group of five DGs and deputies that landed about 4.00 pm. Halfway down into Port au Prince, we saw a dust storm ahead. We stopped and as I stepped out the ground was shaking. It was Haiti’s worst earthquake. The streets were packed with people. Some houses were flattened like pancakes. As we passed houses we heard screams of people trapped in buildings. We saw people bringing out their dead, covering them with white sheets and leaving them on the parapets. We heard people singing hymns from the back of houses. When we got to the hotel about three hours later we camped out on the lawns.”
About 220,000 people died. “From the group that arrived that morning we lost the DGs and deputies from Aruba and Antigua and Barbuda.” Their bodies were recovered about two weeks later.”
After four days trying to get out, Field returned to Jamaica in an Air Jamaica rescue aircraft sent to take in relief supplies and evacuate people.
Some time later he was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder from witnessing the events of the earthquake. It took him years before he could talk about the events.
The father of three children Adeola, Egbert (Jnr) and Ewart, a pilot like his father, Field credits his wife, Sydney, for many of his achievements.
Noting he eats, sleeps and breathes aviation, Field paid tribute to his late friend and mentor Captain Malcolm Chan-a-Sue and colleague and friend Captain Fazal Khan. Chan-a-Sue was his closest confidante in terms of aviation and he saw Khan as the most honest person with the highest level of integrity he had to deal with in terms of aviation.
Field loves singing and is known as the Singing DG of ICAO. “At the end of major conferences I am asked to render a tune. To those coming home on the Boeing 757, I sang ‘I’ll be home for Christmas. You can count on me.’”
