Aruba Airlines on Wednesday presented its formal application to the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) seeking permission to operate out of Guyana, according to Captain Gerry Gouveia.
The revelation was made at the inaugural Annual General Meeting of the National Air Transport Association (NATA).
Captain Gouveia, the Vice President of NATA, also noted that search and rescue operations remained a serious concern for local aviation operators, since there were no systems in place to deal with those operations.
“It is unfortunate that we almost always respond spontaneously to these things rather than having a system set up,” he said.
“The Private Sector has been advocating for quite a long time that maybe what we could do is set up a search-and-rescue system in the organisation of the Civil Defence Commission, because they already have equipment and machines. All they need to have is a department in there to deal with maritime search and rescue and aviation search and rescue, because they have the emergency response systems already,” Gouveia posited.
He also made an appeal to Junior Public Infrastructure Minister Annette Ferguson to consider the Private Sector’s proposal since it was much-needed.
NATA’s President, Annette Arjoon-Martins, in her report, stated that the local aviation sector served as a catalyst to green tourism. She also stressed the need for a comprehensive search-and-rescue system, since it was imperative for the aviation and tourism sectors.
She said NATA started with nine aircraft operators, which represented 90 per cent of the local aviation industry, but has since expanded to include pilots, engineers and flight attendants of the member companies. Arjoon-Martins indicated that the Association was also committed to working with non-member aviation operators. She lauded the GCAA and both Public Infrastructure Ministers for their commitment to NATA’s advocacy and for the Civil Aviation Bill.
In delivering the feature address, Minister Ferguson stated that the civil aviation industry accounted for one per cent of the country’s GDP while providing 1 in 20 jobs, thus impacting the economy.
“The Government of Guyana recognises the valuable contribution of the aviation industry to the growth of the economy and, as a consequence, has begun to improve strategic alignment with the aviation sector,” she stated.
“The efforts of the Government of Guyana have also not gone unnoticed. On April 7, a bulletin was released in Montreal, Canada by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) where Guyana was selected as one of the 12 countries from a membership of 191 to receive the ICAO Council President Certificate 2016 for the significant progress it has made in resolving its safety oversight deficiencies and improving the effective implementation of ICAO standards and recommended practices,” the Minister informed.
GCAA Director General, Retired Lieutenant Colonel Egbert Field congratulated NATA for the good work it has been doing. He informed stakeholders that the GCAA was there to facilitate the development of the aviation sector and not to police it.
