A government shutdown in the United States of America over the funding of a border wall between that country and Mexico has resulted in a delay in the November 09, 2018 accident probe involving an aircraft belonging to Fly Jamaica airlines.
The shutdown is centered on an argument in which President Donald Trump seeks to include $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall as part of an upcoming bill but democrats have refused to support the bill.
A source at the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) said that investigators are waiting on a report from the National Transportation Safety Bureau (NTSB) to proceed with their investigation. NTSB is a government agency in the US and most of these agencies have been closed since December 22, last.
The black box for the Boeing 757-200 plane that crash landed at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport has been sent to NTSB for decoding. Information obtained from this device can assist investigators in finding out what caused the accident.
The black box is made up of two critical pieces of equipment—the flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder. The recorders are installed in planes to help reconstruct the events leading to an accident.
The Cockpit Voice Recorder records radio transmissions and sounds in the cockpit, such as the pilot’s voices and engine noises while the Flight Data Recorder monitors parameters such as altitude, airspeed and heading.
On the morning of November 09, 2018, a Boeing 757-200 plane—destined for Toronto, Canada with 118 adults, two infants and eight crew members—crash landed at the CJIA. The passengers included one American, 82 Canadians, 35 Guyanese, one Pakistani and one Trinidadian.
Public Infrastructure Minister, David Patterson had confirmed that the plane departed Guyana at 2:53 am and at 2:21 minutes, the pilot reported a hydraulic problem and requested permission to return and land on the airstrip.
Upon landing, the Guyana Standard was told that the plane’s brakes reportedly failed, causing the aircraft to crash land.
The airline in a press release confirmed that the plane returned to Georgetown with a technical problem and suffered an accident on landing.
In July, 2011 a Caribbean Airline Boeing 737-800 aircraft with 163 passengers overran the runway at the CJIA and broke into two. Seven persons were injured.
