Govt corrects ‘highly unusual’ situation at Piarco Airport

Works Minister Colm Imbert said that the "unsuitable arrangement" resulted in the loss of revenue amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars from air navigation charges.

Speaking at a post-Cabinet news conference at Whitehall, he said new (higher) air navigation rates would be imposed by the Civil Aviation Authority, which would now assume the functions of setting and collecting the rates.

Explaining the rationale for Cabinet’s decision to set up new arrangements for the imposition of air navigation charges in the Piarco flight region, Imbert said that under the previous scheme, Trinidad and Tobago received $20 million per annum for these services, while the cost of providing the service was "way in excess" of $50 million per annum. "If you look at the differential between the actual cost and what is received (in revenue) and you work that out over a 55-year period, you are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars that the Trinidad and Tobago taxpayers have been subsiding in the provision of air navigation services in the Piarco flight region," he said.

This region, comprising some 750,000 square miles, included Caribbean countries as far north as Antigua and extending 1,000 square miles into the Atlantic, he explained. (It incorporated countries like Grenada, Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Martinque, Montserrat, St Kitts, St Lucia, St Vincent and Trinidad and Tobago).

Giving the history, Imbert said the charges for air navigation services were fixed in 1950 by a private company formed by the airlines, Inter-Caribbean Aeronautical Communica-tions Ltd. Since then, this company has collected income from the airlines, charging fees for the air navigation services. Imbert pointed out, however, that the company has been using an air navigation system provided by the Government of Trinidad and Tobago and paid for by the Trinidad and Tobago taxpayer.

He said Cabinet decided on a new arrangement in which Civil Aviation Services through a subsidiary company — Caribbean Air Navigation and Advisory Services Ltd — will fix and collect air navigation rates.

He said net effect of the new plan would be that proper charges would be imposed and collected by Trindad and Tobago for the air services it provides. He said the new charges would be based on cost recovery, "rather than providing a tremendous gift" to the airlines. He said this would allow Trinidad and Tobago to update its radar information systems. Turning to the issue of the achievement of Category I status, Imbert said it meant that the Federal Aviation Administration of the US was satisfied that the Civil Aviation Authority (CCA) of the Ministry of Works was competent to regulate civil aircraft operations in accordance with international civil aviation standards.

He said it also meant that the CCA now had the authority to license local airlines to fly to multiple destinations in the United States. "It means that if Tobago Express decided that it wished to fly to Puerto Rico — which is American air space — and the CCA licensed Tobago Express to do that, it can fly into the US." He said the achievement of Category I status, which also allowed code-sharing with various carriers, was a "tremendous achievement" and put this country on the road to first world status.