Another plane skids off Guyana’s airstrip.

Photo: Amanda Alleyne

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Monday August 22, 2011– Three weeks after a Caribbean Airlines Limited (CAL) aircraft ran off the runway at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, a small Trans Guyana Airways plane skidded off an airstrip at Port Kaituma in the country’s interior over the weekend.

No one was seriously injured but the plane was damaged badly.

The Britten Norman Islander was carrying four Guyanese passengers when it ran off the end of the airstrip and crashed into a fence as the pilot tried to land in bad weather on Saturday.

Media reports indicate that the main landing gear of the aircraft was damaged during the landing attempt and that caused the plane to run off the airstrip.

A team from the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) has started its probe into the incident.

The GCAA is still working with others agencies in investigating the CAL crash landing at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport on July 30.

In that incident, the CAL plane overshot the runway, crashed through the airport’s perimeter fence and stopped on a roadway, breaking in two in the process.

Several of the 163 passengers and crew members were injured, though most of them not seriously. Reports out of Guyana are that a passenger who sustained a broken leg subsequently lost the limb.
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