Air Traffic communications between Anguilla and St. Maarten were disrupted by Hurricane Irma which destroyed both islands’ radar and beacon communications systems. This , and other related circumstances, seriously impacted incoming flights, lessening in particular the executive jets arriving at the Clayton Lloyd International Airport. One of the causes was also the absence of a hurricane contingency plan to follow when such a situation arises.
Hopefully, that lack of a plan, and other related matters, are now about to change following a specially-arranged aviation meeting on Friday, January 19, at La Vue Conference Centre in Anguilla. The Inter-Facility meeting, as the event is called, brings together top aviation management personnel from Anguilla, St. Maarten, St. Martin, St. Barths, Saba and Statia.
Mr. Allen Barnett, Executive Manager at the Clayton Lloyd International Airport, spoke to The Anguillian in advance of the meeting. “It is a stakeholders’ meeting for airports that are in the St. Maarten controlled airspace,” he explained. “It is to make sure that we all understand each other’s difficulties and I believe this is the first such meeting for several years. “After the hurricane [Irma] we were left with some issues and one of the glaring matters was that nobody really had a proper hurricane plan or disaster plan so that’s one of the top topics from my end. We want to know what the contingency plans are if the radar goes down, is blown away, or if there is an earthquake – that we have proper back-ups.”
Mr. Barnett stressed that he was “not talking about direct communications or contingency plans for the controlling of aeroplanes.” He explained that “it was the softer communications between management to management and we need a little more formality with that, so that we can exchange time lines easily.” In his view, such communications, for example, would allow management to know “when the radar or radio beacon is coming back or how long it is going to be off for.”
He continued: “That was the type of information we found that was lacking amongst all of us. We didn’t have proper communications at the higher management level. We have always had good communications down at the operating level. This is establishing communications at the higher management level.”
Asked about some of the difficulties experienced recently, Mr. Barnett replied: “Because of the communications difficulties they [Juliana International Airport in St. Maarten] had and the communications difficulties we had after the hurricane, we were quite a long time waiting to hear what their plans were and for us to share ours with them for collaboration. We ended up having to deal basically with San Juan airport. San Juan is actually the overall controller of the airspace. As St. Maarten was closed, they became our controllers as well. Then San Juan had a hurricane [Maria] and had problems so a lot of it was confusing, as you don’t always have two places being knocked out at the same time.
“If St. Maarten breaks down, controlling our airspace goes to San Juan and if San Juan breaks down it goes to Miami. We ended up with Miami. Things could have happened quicker if everybody had known what was going to happen and even at the operational level there was no one to talk to. As I said, after the hurricane [Irma] it took us quite a while to establish proper contact with St. Maarten to get things done. The only place we could establish some contact with was San Juan, as I said.”
Now that there is a somewhat normalcy with the airspace and other aviation collaboration matters between Anguilla, St. Maarten and the other neighbouring islands, Mr. Barnett had this to say:
“Yes, we are sort of normal. Both St. Maarten and us, and the other airports, realise that we have to mesh together, work together, and have our procedures a little bit more closely meshed together.”
Mr. Barnett added: “We have to get our time lines in order because we have to make decisions not knowing how long their (St. Maarten’s) radar is going to be off. That is still a little iffy. It could be off for the next year. If that is so, then there are going to be delays in the airspace for the next year. We want them to share that kind of information with us.”
