ICAO Warns for Safety During COVID-19 Global Aviation Recovery

Nov 17 in Safety News

The ICAO Council endorsed new updates yesterday to its Aviation Recovery Task Force’s (CART’s) ‘Take-off’ Guidelines for international air transport.

The new guidelines provide recommendations for countries to consider adopting per their current local medical status, and on specific priorities including general hygiene, masks and face coverings, health screening and declarations, air passengers with reduced mobility, and the mental health and well-being of aviation workers and passengers.

Aviation safety-related measures

As States work to restart air travel, a large proportion of the global fleet, air crew, airport operations staff, and air traffic controllers that have been inactive for prolonged periods will need to be reactivated and retrained, where appropriate.

To ensure a safe restart, States should take the necessary steps to mitigate the safety risks associated with such reactivation.

States that have filed differences for temporary departures from ICAO Standards under the COVID-19 Contingency Related Differences (CCRD), or that have granted other COVID-19-related regulatory alleviation, are reminded that these differences and alleviations were intended to be temporary in nature.

Prolonged differences and alleviations, such as those related to personnel certification and licensing, could result in an elevated operational safety risk. States should, therefore, put in place the necessary measures to manage those risks and should not extend alleviations (both core and extended CCRDs) beyond 31 March 2021.

States are encouraged to facilitate access to medical and training facilities, including flight simulation training devices used for flight crew to maintain their recency of experience and proficiency.

States also are strongly encouraged to refer their operators to the ICAO Operational Safety Measures website, where links to guidance documents developed by ICAO, ACI, IATA, the ICCAIA, and others, are available.

To reach ICAO page, please click HERE