Pilot may have overloaded aircraft

Eteringbang plane crash

– aviation source

A source close to the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority’s investigative team says the recent plane crash at Eteringbang airstrip in Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni) on August 8, 2017, may be due to the pilot overloading the aircraft.
The Wings Aviation plane was on a shuttling mission from Eteringbang to Ekereku when the incident occurred at around 11:00h. The pilot, Captain Dominique Waddell, was not seriously injured and is said to be recuperating. The GCAA has since launched an investigation into the incident to “ascertain the circumstances leading to the crash of a single engine CESSNA aircraft – bearing registration number 8R-GPR.”
“The plane was taking off from Eteringbang and it had four drums of fuel, you already know it got a centre of gravity and when he load the plane so much from the back it shifts the centre of gravity,” the source said.
The senior source from the aviation industry is of the belief that when the aircraft took off it tilted back too much causing it to ascend ‘too steep’ and the centre of gravity shifted further, causing the plane to stall. It was further explained that when a plane stalls, it goes nose down and has a tendency to pull left and “that is exactly what transpired and concretises the fact that the aircraft was over loaded”.
Meanwhile, on July 25, 2017, Captain Collin Martin, a retired Guyana Defence Force Major, was piloting a Roraima Airways aircraft when it crashed – also at Eteringbang – killing him almost instantly.