The duties of the director general of civil aviation (DGCA) of the TT Civil Aviation Authority (TTCAA) are prescribed by the Civil Aviation Act and the regulations made thereunder.
During my tenure as DGCA, I always strived to discharge those duties with the utmost impartiality, fairness and equity, with the safety of aviation being of paramount consideration as required by section 8 of the act.
The cabin on the Boeing 737-800 aircraft has approved seating for six flight attendants. There is one double-occupancy rear-facing seat at the forward left main door and another at each of the left- and right-hand rear doors. These seats are retractable when not in use and are equipped with shoulder harnesses for use by flight attendants whenever the fasten-seatbelt sign is on, such as during takeoffs, landings or turbulence.
The complement of flight attendants on the CAL Boeing 737-800 is based on one flight attendant for every 50 passengers. Therefore, with a seating configuration of 154 passengers, the regulatory minimum number of flight attendants is four. When the aircraft is operating with the legal minimum, there are two unused flight-attendant seats, normally referred to as "jump seats."
In early 2010, at CAL’s request, the TTCAA granted a one-time approval for a senior CAL executive to travel from New York to Port of Spain using a vacant flight-attendant seat, because all passenger seats were occupied by full-revenue passengers. Subsequently, CAL sought the TTCAA approval for senior managers to use unused flight-attendant seats when necessary. The TTCAA acquiesced and approved amendments to CAL’s operations manual to give legitimacy to this arrangement.
The TTCAA eventually approved the use of cabin jump seats by all CAL employees and their travel companions. As a condition, they had to be briefed on the use of emergency equipment, including the shoulder harness, which was quite different from the passenger seatbelts.
In March 2011, I travelled on a non-stop CAL flight to Toronto on my way to the ICAO headquarters in Montreal to attend a high-level global aviation meeting.
The flight was approximately six hours long and required a meal-and-a-half cabin service. When the aircraft was about 90 minutes inbound into Toronto, the purser, as the senior flight attendant, requested that I meet her in the aft galley.
I obliged and went to the aft galley, where I observed a couple standing next to the right exit door.I assumed that they were waiting to use the aircraft's rear toilets and drew to their attention that the toilets were vacant. The young man then informed me that they were companion travellers who were using the two rear vacant flight-attendant jump seats, as the flight was full.
The three cabin attendants assigned to the economy cabin were clearly flustered in preparing for the half-meal service, and, as these two jump-seat passengers were in their way, had to shift from the right side of the galley to the left side and vice versa to allow the flight attendants to do their cabin-service duti
