In safe hands

The International Civil Aviation Organisation cast a net six years ago. It was designed to catch states that failed to set up the fully competent aviation safety oversight system all nations are required to create to police the internationally agreed standards to which its airlines operate. This device, created in 1999 and called the ICAO Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme (USOAP), could be described as the ultimate global safety net. But just like a fishing net, weaving it and casting it into the waters may have been an essential start, but it is a pointless operation unless the net is eventually going to be hauled in.

Now, metaphorically speaking, ICAO is hauling its net in. And the time is ripe, given the sudden spate of serious airline crashes that have happened in August, following several years with few major accidents. But, actually, ICAO’s move is not the kneejerk reaction it might seem to be. It was a planned upgrading of the USOAP that was already in the pipeline. The fact that there has been a spate of accidents just proved that, although air transport globally has become much safer than it ever was, the system still contained national and regional weaknesses that were, literally, accidents waiting to happen.

It is blatantly obvious that, if an airline does not operate to professional standards in aircraft maintenance, and personnel and crew training, its users will be at greater risk than if they travel with an airline that meets or exceeds the statutory minimum standards. If an airline consistently fails to meet statutory minima, the responsibility lies not only with the airline’s management, but with the government in the carrier’s country of registration that allows it to fly when it should remove its licence to do so. The safety minima – known as standards and recommended practices (SARPs) – are clearly laid down through ICAO, and have been for more than 60 years. But until the need for USOAP was finally admitted – and later implemented – by the organisation’s 188 member states, there was no system for checking that nations carried out their contractual obligations. In 1999 USOAP was implemented. The net had been cast.

USOAP’s weakness was that, in its early form, a state’s aviation authorities were audited, ICAO made recommendations for improvement, but the results of the audit remained essentially confidential. That has changed. Starting from now, all states will receive information on all the USOAP audits, complete with the associated ICAO recommendations, and the audited state’s plans for system rectification. That includes the results of the USOAP team’s subsequent visit to the audited state to see if the plans were being implemented.

Given the sudden European penchant – at national level – for publishing “blacklists” of banned airlines, is this just another “naming and shaming” exercise, and does it stand any chance of making a real difference? Actually the policies are linked – ICAO is helping the European Union to draw up standard criteria for banning unsafe airlines from its airspace, so it could act regionally rather than nationally.

Underpinning all this activity is ICAO’s belief that information is power, and that sharing safety information is vital to enable the global air transport industry to manage its standards. Unless it is clear where problems exist, and what the nature of the problems is, it is impossible to provide resources and to direct them where they are needed. That is the positive potential result of the latest USOAP phase – the “carrot” in what is designed to be a carrot-and-stick strategy.

But USOAP provides the stick as well. Theoretically, nations that care about aviation safety and police their own standards well will be given the means to identify – unarguably – those states whose airlines are not properly independently monitored for safety. This makes it easier, on the diplomatic front, for one sovereign nation to demand of another that if it wants its airlines to be able to operate between the two countries without restriction and additional monitoring, it has to prove its compliance with ICAO’s SARPs on safety oversight.

This will not solve all the world’s safety problems overnight, but it is an essential step in the right direction. The ultimate question is, will all the world’s safer – and usually richer – countries be prepared to accept that they will have to do more to help the poorer nations raise their game?

Source: Flight International