Puerto Rican Air Carrier’s Pilots Suspected Underqualified

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has proposed a $134,475 civil penalty against Vieques Air Link (VAL) of Puerto Rico for allegedly crewing passenger flights with unqualified pilots.

The agency alleges the air-carrier employed and dispatched pilots lacking requisite certification to operate under Part 135 of the U.S. Federal Aviation Regulations. Subject pilots reportedly served as flight-crew members aboard 11 commercial, passenger-carrying flights conducted in the air-carrier’s multi-engined, Britten-Norman aircraft between July and August 2022.

Founded in 1965 by Osvaldo "Val" Gonzalez-Duriex, Vieques Air Link is a small Puerto Rico-based Part 135 air-carrier offering passenger and freight service between the east Puerto Rican island municipality of Vieques and: Isla Culebra, a neighboring east Puerto Rican island municipality; mainland Puerto Rico; and the U.S. Virgin Islands of St. Croix and St. Thomas.

Initially, VAL’s service was restricted to three-passenger flights between Vieques and Humacao—a small city on the Puerto Rican mainland’s east coast. Between 1968 and the mid-1980s, the air-carrier added flights to the Virgin Islands and the Puerto Rican capital city of San Juan. In 1989, Vieques Air Link lost the entirety of its fleet Hurricane Hugo, but soon thereafter acquired seven Britten-Norman Islanders and three Trislanders.

The Vieques conflict of 1999—a protracted dustup during which the people of Vieques vehemently and repeatedly protested the United States Navy’s and Marine Corps’ practice of using their island for bombing target practice—afforded VAL a passenger influx and boon of free promotion.

Currently VAL’s fleet comprises three Cessna Caravans, five Britten-Norman Islanders, and two Britten-Norman Trislanders—the latter being an exceedingly rare, riotously unorthodox tractor-propeller-driven airplane featuring three reciprocating engines—two of which are mounted conventionally in the machine’s high, full-cantilever wing, while the third is integrated into its vertical stabilizer. The Trislander’s eccentricity manifests, also, in its fixed, tricycle landing-gear and stretched, rectangular fuselage. Produced between 1970 and 1980, the STOL-capable, 18-seat utility aircraft—more formally designated the BN-2A MkIII Trislander—is an uncanny but effectual mutation of Britten-Norman’s better-known, twin-engined Islander. Notwithstanding the Trislander’s 4,158-pound useful load, 160-knot maximum-speed, 870-nautical-mile range, and impressive STOL performance, only 72 specimens of the outlandish contraption were built.  

The FAA’s allegations against Vieques Air Link, if true, contradict the air-carrier’s website—which explicitly asserts: “Our airline counts with a highly qualified group of pilots …”

Upon receiving the FAA’s enforcement letter, Vieques Air Link will have thirty-days to respond to such.

FMI:www.viequesairlink.com