Head of the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) Egbert Field on Saturday said that the new Guyana Airways, which recently won a Court case against the Government for the use of the name, has never filed an application to operate in Guyana.
This was related by the Director General of the GCCA, during an exclusive interview with <<<Inews>>> on Saturday.
“The Civil Aviation Authority onto the time of my departure on Tuesday for the Director General’s Conference in Peru, we have not received any information or any documentation from Guyana Airways…we have not received any application from Guyana Airways,” Field said.
Although it has been in the air that the proprietor of the airline had submitted his application for operations, the director noted, “they’ll have to submit an application. They never did submit an application before and I want to make it pretty clear.”
According to him, Guyana Airways filed an ‘intent of operations’ on the work they intended to pursue. “That was not an application. The application process starts when you provide the application for the operation so we are awaiting, now after the court’s decision, (for) the application from the Guyana Airways,” he explained.
Although the airline was hoping to begin operations in February 2019 as was related to this newspaper by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Guyana Airways Corporation (GAC), Colin Abrams, this may not be possible since it takes at least 12 or 13 months before the airline’s application is approved, due to the processing requirements.
“The normal process when an airline is being approved or going through the five step process for an air operators’ certificate which is what the entity would have to go through before an air operator’s certificate is granted, if it’s a large jet operations because of the intricacies which are involved, it could take as much as a year to 13 months. If it’s a small operation like a domestic caravan or even an islander operation then that process can take between four to six months,” Field explained.
This period, he said, is “absolutely important” as officials would use this phase to ensure that all aspects of the operation are covered such as training for staffers, evaluation of personnel and the documentation of the airline, such as operations manual, flight attendant manual, weight and balance manual, maintenance manual and several others, to outline the procedures for the specific section. He said this phase usually takes up most of time.
Further he outlined that the aircraft’s facilities would require inspections and the aircraft itself would require evaluation. These processes he mentioned are important as it would ensure passenger safety among others.
Government had taken the private airline to court this year for using the name which was used by two other companies which no longer exist.
The inconvenienced business man explained during a previous interview, “Two years after we’ve been registered and putting all this together and spending all this money, they just snuffed the life out of us without a hearing, without anything. We just had a marshal show up at our secretary’s home and that’s it, so they kinda murdered us.”
According to him, 110 flight attendants have already been hired for the two airlines which will soon provide flights to Cuba, Barbados and Trinidad for now and will extend its services to the United States of America when Guyana becomes authorized to do so.
Meanwhile, some 150 persons in total will be hired to work on the airline. Training for those employees will be done here in Guyana for four weeks and wind down in Miami, USA.
Among the cards expected to be thrown out on the table by the airline is that of low cost flights. The CEO noted that flights with Guyana Airways will be of a reduced cost all year round, which will afford Guyanese the opportunity to fly back and forth from North to South America. (Davina Ramdass)
