Some one hundred and fifteen passengers were seriously inconvenienced and forced to remain in Guyana yesterday, after a Caribbean Airlines flight was grounded owing to the malfunction of a computer on board the plane.
General Manager of Caribbean Airlines, South America, Carlton DeFour told Stabroek News that flight BW424 to JFK in New York with a stop in Trinidad was scheduled to leave the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, Timehri at 12:30 pm yesterday, but had to be cancelled when problems developed with a computer on the plane.
He said that the plane was in take off mode and was taxiing down the runway when the problem developed. There was an attempt to fix the problem and another try at take off, he said. However, it was realized that the problem could not be fixed in a short period of time and in the interest of safety the flight was cancelled.
DeFour explained that the parts and technicians would have been flown in on the airline’s last flight around 10:30 last night and repairs instituted.
He said that the flight should be on around 3 or 4 pm today.
Admitting that there would have been disgruntled passengers at the delay, DeFour said the airline moved to minimize such; passengers were put up at hotels and transportation provided to and from the airport.
Meanwhile, this newspaper has also learnt that last Saturday another Caribbean Airlines flight was delayed for more than two hours after a computer glitch at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport slowed check-in to less than a crawl.
Audrey Bacchus, a passenger scheduled to leave on BW424 to JFK, New York with one stop in Trinidad, told Stabroek News that there were two Caribbean Airlines flights – the second one was going to Toronto — and a large number of people checking in when the computers at the check-in counter went blank. Bacchus said that after some time an airline official informed passengers that there was a problem with the computers and asked them to be patient.
Bacchus, a pensioner, said that after the computers came on again, they spewed out undecipherable boarding passes and baggage tags for a while before finally printing the correct information.
The passenger said when she enquired, the check-in clerk told her that it was the inclement weather at Timehri that had affected the computers. There was heavy rainfall and flooding on Saturday. Despite being frustrated at the delay, however, Bacchus commended the Caribbean Airlines staff on duty that day for operating professionally and courteously under what were clearly difficult conditions.
