I sometimes wonder how Guyana keeps going in the face
of ‘de small man doing he ting’.
My mind jumped to the 60 yr old woman who along with numerous
others had been squatting (illegally) for some time in the flight path of the
smaller local airstrip at Ogle apparently since 1992, in spite of numerous
house-lots being made available at low cost.
So about ten days or so ago, the inevitable happened—a small
aircraft crashed in her house after engine failure and being knocked off-track
by the top of a coconut tree. The papers apparently omitted to say that the
71-yr old American pilot, clearly suffering from massa-syndrome, shrugged off
the local engineers’ warning that the plane was un-flight-worthy as it was his
personal aircraft which he flew down from Florida where his company was based.
Apparently the morning run proved ok but he pushed his luck during the second
afternoon flight and for some reason – probably male arrogance – did not return
immediately when one engine failed and apparently didn’t switch over to the
other engine in time and fell on the woman’s house.
Which begs the question of why would someone want to go to
the trouble of getting in a foreign pilot unfamiliar with the territory to fly
over Guyana’s interior air-space, notorious for not adhering the GPS
specifications – apparently mountains appearing suddenly out of the mist. A
similar tragedy happened last year with some gadget-loaded plane – you think
‘they’ would learn? There are two or three local flight companies—surely it is
better to pay them and be safe or at the very least—pay a local pilot to assist?
Then begs the question of who pays for the house and why
should they as the woman is there illegally?
Apparently the spineless Government, missing a good opportunity to say
‘I told you so’ found a spare house in the area to lodge her, until they sort
out if the man’s insurance will cover her costs—fat chance in hell I would have
thought— but then who gave the man permission to fly over Guyana’s airspace
without making sure all the technicalities were in place? Oh – could it be the
Government trying to cover their backside in a dodgy Amelia Falls project? What
a wicked web we weave when first we practice to deceive…
