Even as Monday’s ceremony appears to have signalled an end to the battle by the National Air Transport Association (NATA) to prevent the former Ogle International Airport facility from being renamed the Eugene F Correia International Airport, there are clear signs that the feuding between the management of Ogle Airport Inc and several of the other operators there may persist for some while longer.
This week, Michael Correia, President of the Board of Ogle Airport Inc the body charged with the running of the newly renamed facility and Captain Gerry Gouveia, CEO of Roraima Airways and Vice President of the recently created NATA exchanged harsh words that have left observers to wonder whether the two men can still work together seriously as members of the Aircraft Owners Association of Guyana (AOAG).
On Monday, Correia used the occasion of the renaming of the airport to charge that Roraima Airways and all of the other operators had contributed “little or nothing” to the development of Guyana’s second international airport. “While he purports to be a major player in the development of the airport, he never was,” Correia said of his competitor.
On Wednesday, Gouveia, who is currently out of Guyana on business, responded, asserting that while Correia was attacking him “personally” his comments continued to be “the voice of the nine disgruntled Guyanese aircraft operators.”
In his response to Correia’s assertion that “Roraima Airways and all the other companies” had contributed “little or nothing” to the development of Ogle, Gouveia said that on its own, Correia’s company Trans Guyana Airways “could never have been awarded the lease from the government; the government agreed to award us the lease only because of who we are, both individually and collectively, it had nothing to do with how much money any of us had.”
Gouveia told Stabroek Business that at the start of the partnership, “We agreed to operate with trust and good faith as the hallmarks of our relationship even as we continued to be competitors. We agreed that never would anyone of us have more say than the other.”
