The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is a United
Nations (UN) specialized agency that is aimed to "Promote understanding
and security through cooperative aviation regulation" (http://www.icao.int)
As of late ICAO is
known to be the "minimum acceptable standard" (ALPA) for aviation
safety and security worldwide. Many other organizations have formed such as the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the United States and the European
Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in the European Union both of these organizations
provide much more stringent aviation regulations aimed to further the
safety and security fronts in aviation as a whole. In a way this reminds me of
something an aviation mentor once told me, "there is a difference between
legal and safe". Of course this is vague but applied to ICAO
being the minimum and also considered to be legal this would
not necessarily make these minimum regulations safe. These additional
organizations could be considered to be the success stories in the aviation
safety world, of course on the contrary you have many developing countries with
significant aviation activity that follow only the minimum.
A few of these
issues that ICAO seems to be struggling with include items such as flight/duty
time requirements, and flight deck safety measures as well as many more listed
(http://www.alpa.org/publications/ALPA_White_Paper_Leveling_the_Playing_Field_June_2012/ALPA_White_Paper_Leveling_the_Playing_Field_June_2012.html#section3-1-1) by
the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), many of these problems laid out within
there article seems in a way to be no-'brainer' ideas that should not be
an issue for ICAO to adopt and put into regulation worldwide to protect all
commercial aviation activity.
This brings us to
the next question, How practical is the implementation of these additional
standards laid out by ALPA? Well, it seems to me this is just a matter
of policy change and additional levels of ICAO overnight.
Logistically I believe that all of these suggestions are very much practical to
apply, clearly not overnight but with time deadlines to meet for these
commercial operators I couldn't see it not working because if they do not
comply they simply cannot fly
I agree that these additional standards should be implemented (especially when it comes to safety). However, I have to believe that there will be push back from some countries/commercial operators. It's unfortunate, but I think some operators may be more concerned with their finances than the safety of the crew and passengers.
ReplyDeleteI could see that being an issue as well, but in the event these commercial operators fail to comply I would figure they would just not be legal and be shut down, I don't think the operators should have a choice.
ReplyDeleteInteresting point about "legal" vs. "safe". It is important, though, to remember that finances are always a consideration what determining what level of safety regulations to implement, even in the US. There is a price placed on an accident and if the price of implementing a new regulation outweighs the price of an accident, alternative solutions (non-regulatory solutions) are considered.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that half of the recommendations at the ALPA link are directed at the U.S. rather than ICAO.
ReplyDeleteI find it scary to see that the flight time and duty regulations for cargo operations are not as strict as they are for airline operations. Sure, a cargo aircraft may only have a captain, co-captain and mechanic on board, but what happens when these 3 individuals pass out from exhaustion and the airplanes runs out of fuel and crashes and kills possibly hundreds of unexacting victims on the ground? In my opinion, killing a few innocent people is just as tragic as killing a hundred.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone else notice that the common no-brainer laws are the ones most often talked about throughout the industry?? Examples such as duty time, alcohol use, passenger briefing, airspace regs, etc are all topics that I think should really be a "no-brainer" and yet everyone still breaks them!
ReplyDelete