MECHANICAL PROBLEMS forced Air Jamaica to cancel a New York-bound flight on Sunday, after passengers who had already boarded were forced to wait on the tarmac at Norman Manley International Airport, east Kingston, for over an hour.
Sandrea Falconer, Air Jamaica's spokesperson, said yesterday that the airline put up the affected passengers in hotels, after maintenance checks revealed a damaged aircraft part that had to be obtained from abroad.
She said that because it was summer, some planes were working harder than usual and had to be maintained even more regularly.
Meanwhile, radio equipment for air traffic controllers installed in February after a one-day sick-out by 30 controllers is said to be working well. "They've installed all the relevant things, better tools have been given to us to work with," president of the Jamaica Air Traffic Controllers Association, Lynden Wallen, said. "Since then things have been okay."
Thirty air traffic controllers staged a one-day protest at the Norman Manley International Airport in February over not being provided with new radio equipment that they had been demanding for two years. Until they resumed, a skeleton staff of managers supervised incoming and outgoing flights from the airport. No flights were cancelled as a result of the strike. For two years the radio equipment, used for communications between the controllers was found to be inefficient, as the controllers had difficulty communicating with pilots landing, departing or flying over Jamaica.
The controllers held that the equipment needed to be replaced, with no action taken until the strike, which was put to rest by Transport Minister, Robert Pickersgill, who promised improvements.
