Pilots trapped in cabin

Elias, who was in Guyana with members of his family for a wedding, said no one should be blaming the crew for not helping anyone.

“They could not help anyone because they were affected just like everyone else,” he said.

A Guyana Defence Force soldier, on condition of anonymity, told Newsday that the pilot Fareed Dean and co-pilot Jason Naipaul were trapped in their cabin. “Their door had to be prised open by the Guyana Fire Service to get them out. They were lifted out of the cabin.”

The soldier said even though the pilot could not stand on his feet and had to be helped, he insisted on remaining on the scene until he was “coerced” to leave to seek medical attention.

Elias recalled two flight attendants being on their feet at the time the aircraft hit the runway.

“I don’t think they were prepared for landing. None of us were. The plane was going too fast for a landing,” he said.

When the aircraft hit the ground, he said, the flight attendant who was in the aisle in front of him fell to the floor and the impact sent her sliding along the aisle. He does not know what happened to the other attendant.

As people were struggling to get out, he said he was struggling to get to his wife, who was shouting out his name, and his children who were in the first row in the economy class. The aircraft split in half ahead of them. Elias was in the fourteenth row.

When he spoke with Newsday yesterday, Elias was upset at their seating arrangements on the aircraft. As a family of six, he said they should have been seated together. Elias was travelling with his mother, wife and two children, and his brother.

Elias and his brother were separated from the women and children at John F Kennedy Airport and were again moved to different seats on the Piarco to Guyana leg. It is a matter he intends to take up with Caribbean Airlines.

Elias is also concerned about counselling for his family.

As of yesterday, he said they had received no counselling. His mother, Zairool; wife, Debbie; and daughter, Amelia, seven, are afraid to get back on an aircraft.

Amelia, who is to be a flower girl at a relative’s wedding, wants to go back home to New York, but she wants to return by boat.

Debbie told Newsday she wants to get back to New York quickly. Her mind is no longer with the wedding which they came to attend.

“I know I have to go back home on a plane. I know it is not going to be easy. It’s on my mind all the time,” she said.

Debbie admitted, too, to not remembering many things that happened. She was just focussed on her children. She remembered trying to cover them from debris that rained down on them as the aircraft split open. She keeps remembering some things in “bits and pieces”.