Before the establishment of the TT Civil Aviation Authority (TTCAA) by the Civil Aviation Act 2001, civil aviation was regulated by the Civil Aviation Division (CAD) of the Ministry of Works and Transport, headed by a director of civil aviation (DCA).

The “technical staff’ of the CAD were mainly ex-air traffic controllers who had limited competencies in the areas of flight operations and airworthiness.

Since the colonial era, the TT government contracted the UK Air Registration Board (ARB), now known as the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), to provide flight operations and airworthiness regulatory oversight services to the CAD, at significant cost to TT taxpayers.

Three UK CAA surveyors were based at Piarco International Airport. All matters pertaining to personnel licencing, flight operations and airworthiness which required the approval of the DCA were referred to the UK CAA for recommendations. In almost every instance, the DCA accepted the recommendations of the CAA, which were based on UK aviation safety standards. Pilots’ and engineers’ exams were based on UK standards and administered by the UK CAA.

Commercial aircraft built in the US by Boeing, McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed were manufactured in accordance with FAA standards. In the UK, aircraft were manufactured in accordance with the British standards, until the coming into force of European standards.

The UK had a national variance to the US- and European-designed standards, known as “UK special conditions,” which were additional design requirements specific to transport aircraft, particularly those manufactured in the US by Boeing and McDonnell Douglas and imported into the UK by British airlines.

As the UK CAA were TT aviation safety advisers, the DCA mandated that the four Lockheed L1011-500 aircraft bought by BWIA in 1977 should comply with the UK CAA design requirements. These were the same design standards applicable to UK L1011-500 aircraft operated by British Airways (BA) and Caledonian.

Compliance with UK design requirements increased the cost of the L1011-500 aircraft compared to one bought by a US operator. For example, the UK CAA required that all the meal and bar trolleys used on the L1011-500 should be restrained with retractable cables attached to the passenger seats whenever trolleys were "unhanded" while the flight attendants were serving meals and drinks. The retractable cable devices regularly malfunctioned and were a flight attendant’s nightmare.

Also, the passenger seats had to be redesigned to support the weight of the passenger and a full trolley. This required the floor tracks on which the seats were attached to be thicker, to carry the additional loads of the seats under crash conditions. All of this increased the selling price of the aircraft.

Several years later, BWIA discovered that UK CAA had waived the requirements for British Airways trolleys to be equipped with cable restraining devices on its wide-bodied aircraft. The local CAA office was immediately confronted and agreed also to grant BWIA the same w