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Canadian flight crew still stranded in Dominican Republic after 6 months
A Canadian flight crew who have been detained in the Dominican Republic for the last six months are set to face a court hearing that could send them back to prison. The charter flight crew with Pivot Airlines was set to leave on Punta Cana on April when there was an indication in the cockpit that something was wrong in the avionics bay, a very small hallway within the floor of the airplane. (toronto.citynews.ca) Plus d'info...
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If that’s on the roster, that’s what you do. I don’t know if the flight crew is innocent, but I seriously doubt they had anything to do with it. if they work anything like my airline, the flight just pops up on your roster, you dress up and go. If there happened to be no passengers, who cares. The engineer is often taken on charter outstations to perform the daily inspection so that’s not suspicious either.
What was a CRJ-100 doing in the Dominican Republic in the first place? A fully loaded CRJ doesn't have a comfortable range for a fully loaded flight from Toronto to the DR. I bet the airport authority in the DR must have thought it strange that a near empty CRJ-100 fly all the way to Toronto and remained on the ground for a few days before returning to Toronto nearly empty.
Initial stories claim the jet flew 4 Calgary businessman to the DR but how does it make sense for a Calgary businessman to Charter a regional jet in Toronto to fly to the DR? For a lot less money they could charter a proper business jet and fly direct to the DR from Calgary in more comfort and style and in much less time. There has been no mention of whatever happened to these elusive businessmen.
In this report it is claimed that there were 5 passengers to be on that return flight to Toronto. What happened to them? Why weren't they detained? Were these the "Calgary businessmen"? If DR authorities detained the crew they for sure would have detained the passengers who chartered the jet.
Why was there a mechanic on board this aircraft? How many CRJ's fly with a mechanic on board? Why did they need a mechanic? To open access panels only a mechanic can open?
Nothing about the mission of this aircraft makes sense or seems plausible so the question is what did the crew think they were doing down there? Did the pilots not think it odd that they were dispatched to fly a nearly empty CRJ all the way from Toronto to the DR to sit around for a few days on the ground and then fly back to Toronto essentially empty?
The crew claim that they discovered the drugs and alerted local authorities but I bet local authorities were watching that aircraft like hawks since it arrived in the DR and it was local authorities who found the drugs.
There is no way that DR authorities would detain this crew if they did not have good reason to believe that they were willing participants in a drug running operation. Canadian tourists make up a large portion of the DR's tourist industry. The government would not jeopardize that business worth hundreds of millions for nothing.
If there is evidence of guilt and it can be proven in court I hope that this crew spends a long time in a DR prison. As in the United States thousands of Canadians are dying from fentanyl poisoning. This should not be treated lightly.
I would be interested in hearing what professional pilots and crews think about this story. If you had been dispatched on such a mission to fly and empty CRJ from Toronto to the DR - sit around for a few days on the ground and then fly the empty jet back to Toronto would your suspicions been raised?