Air Safety
Growth straining safety oversight
July 1st 2014
Air safety professionals at the recent Asia-Pacific Aviation Safety Seminar (APASS 2014) unanimously agreed a major industry challenge would be to maintain the highest standards of air safety oversight as airline growth surged. Read More »
“The recent tragic loss of MH370 remains a mystery, but it has highlighted the challenges of an air traffic management system in keeping track of nearly 30 million flights a year,” said Andrew Herdman, the director general of the seminar’s organizer, the Association of Asia-Pacific Airlines (AAPA).
“Will the infrastructure keep up? We can buy as many aircraft as we like. We can hire pilots. But will we find the airspace? Will we have enough runways? Will we have enough terminal capacity?” said Herdman.
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| Mumbai’s new airport can’t cope with growth |
“We have been investing very heavily, but there are hotspots already. There is airspace congestion in China and other parts of this region. There is inadequate airport capacity and runway capacity.”
Delegates and speakers at the seminar agree that governments’ bureaucratic structures and their attendant politics hinder air safety oversight. Governments often own infrastructure. If they don’t, they control planning decisions and co-ordinate departments involved in the safety of air operations and development of facilities, delegates heard. They play a key role in ensuring infrastructure keeps pace with airline growth.
This control, said Herdman, has some safety implications, most often hassles and inefficiencies.
But, he warned, when there is congestion and stress in operating air traffic or airport systems, there can be risks to safety.
The International Civil Aviation Organisation’s (ICAO) Asia-Pacific regional director, Arun Mishra, said growth is very difficult to control, especially in this region. Arun, who was formerly India’s director general of civil aviation, said the huge growth of low-cost carriers in India, from 2004 to 2007, took the government totally by surprise.
“There was no infrastructure to match that growth. We would have planes hovering over Mumbai and Delhi airports for up to 60 minutes waiting to land. My take on this is that growth cannot be controlled. What we can control is oversight. Our oversight has to match that growth,” he said.
ICAO is aware that in many countries “regulators are overworked and overstretched regulating the basic aspects of flying, which leaves them with little opportunity to go into “what if this happens’ when they are managing day to day safety requirements”.
“As more airlines and aircraft enter the market, the capacity of civil aviation authorities needs to be enlarged, Arun said.
“We have to be realistic about the challenges we face in implementing regulatory oversight,” said Herdman. “There is a diversity of capabilities and political structures, rich countries, poor countries.
“Poor countries struggle to retain people of calibre because they don’t have the money to pay global rates. We are the guilty party [airlines] because we are attracting people from the regulators.
“When the industry takes off, that is where the high paying jobs are – and not with the regulators. The regulator is always playing catch up. They have to deal with new airlines, growing airlines, more tasks and fewer resources.
“The downgrades and the operational bans imposed by Europe are the ultimate price you pay when you fall behind in regulatory oversight.”
Arun said air traffic management issues that impact universal standards of safety oversight are slow implementation of expanded air traffic services, inadequate airport infrastructure that increases flight delays, and a lack of civil-military co-operation that limits availability of airspace.
Director of International Programs at the U.S.’s Flight Safety Foundation, Rudy Quevedo, said what really scared him was strong regulatory oversight that was bad.
“We need to be more effective in what we do. We need to be strategic and ask of each rule or decision if it will actively maintain safety standards. We clearly see States [countries] adding some infrastructure, but it is the industry that is leading the way.
“And it is not only airlines that are growing. Business aviation is expanding at a rapid pace. This is even more challenging. How do we manage business aviation growth? What is the level of expertise of that pilot [flying a business jet] who is coming into an airport you are coming into?
“We must have systems in place to identify the risk and manage that risk,” he said.
