Except for complaints about the state of the country’s interior airstrips and the absence of navigation aids, the local aviation industry generally avoids the public limelight. It is a small industry comprising a handful of resilient operators, with the older, more experienced ones, having been around for more than half a century, growing gradually and steadily in spite of challenge of an underdeveloped internal aviation infrastructure.
Those challenges apart, however, these would appear to be brighter days for the industry. In recent years, there has been evidence of costly investment in new aircraft by the private operators in response to the national focus on Guyana’s interior, primarily for economic reasons. The push to exploit the lucrative gold and timber industries and to revive manganese mining has swelled the demand for interior air transportation and the aviation sector has been responding. What has also brought the sector much more into the national spotlight is the challenge set for it by the Government of Guyana of the creation of the country’s second international airport at Ogle.
That too has proceeded quietly, with some hiccups but steadily, nonetheless; until what appears to have been a
