Wrong in so many ways!

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…