The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) published on its website a “Significant Safety Concern” (SSC), still unresolved, detected in the audit conducted in February and March, regarding the verification of radio aids for air navigation, which should be carried out by the Federal Civil Aviation Agency (AFAC).
This concern is one of the 11 that ICAO has identified since the creation of this alert figure, and it is made public through its website. In this case, it involves AFAC as the responsible authority.
“ICAO has identified an SSC that remains unresolved by Mexico. The SSC issue belongs to the area of air navigation services (ANS) regarding the expiration of the periodicity of flight inspection of radio aids for navigation. This does not necessarily indicate a particular operational safety deficiency but rather indicates that the State is not providing sufficient operational safety oversight to ensure the effective implementation of all applicable ICAO standards,” it added.
Contrary to what ICAO has stated, the Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications, and Transportation (SICT) stated that it has conducted significant oversight. It emphasized that AFAC, together with Navigation Services in Mexican Airspace (Seneam), has carried out these aerial verifications during the last two months, which, it pointed out, “maintained the proper functioning of the air navigation equipment.”
It stated that two months ago, they enabled a verification program that includes the review and calibration of radio aids nationwide.
“To date, 95% of existing radio aids nationwide have been verified, resulting in a high level of compliance with international operational margins. It should be noted that the verification tasks carried out over the last two months represent unprecedented work due to the high number of reviews and calibrations performed in such a short time,” the statement emphasized.
It indicated that aviation safety was prioritized at all times, and Seneam engineers kept navigation systems within operational standards, the evidence of which was presented to ICAO.
“For this, they anticipated international demands in terms of aerial verification, with cutting-edge technology to keep navigation systems permanently calibrated and comply with international regulations,” it emphasized.
According to the international organization that belongs to the United Nations, during an audit, ICAO can detect insufficient capacity in the audited State to adequately supervise its service providers, whether airlines, airports; air navigation services, as is the case and/or service provider, within the area under its jurisdiction.
ICAO does not directly audit the aviation industry or sector service providers, but focuses on the “surveillance capacity” of operational safety by the governmental authority designated as responsible for civil aviation.
“(It is carried out) to obtain more specific information about the safety of the various components of the aviation system (i.e., airlines, airports, aircraft, or air navigation service providers)” through supervisory actions by authorities based on the guidelines of the annexes of the Chicago Convention, the origin of this international organization.
It added that the full technical details of the conclusions are made available to the Civil Aviation Authority of the State, in the case of Mexico corresponding to AFAC, to guide rectification, as well as to facilitate any action they deem necessary to ensure safety.
Furthermore, “The audited State also commits to periodically inform ICAO of progress in correcting the safety issue,” it noted.
The audit of the Mexican aviation authority by ICAO began on February 14 and concluded on March 14, the investigation was divided into two phases.
According to the minutes – derived from the first phase of the audit – in possession of A21, the global authority found 142 observations regarding operational safety surveillance in Mexico.
According to the official documents of the audit, there are 94 responses to questions classified as “unsatisfactory”, 32 “satisfactory” and 16 “pending”. The documents indicate that 69 of the 142 observations are related to air navigation.
On the other hand, ICAO pointed out that, in addition to Mexico, the ICAO member States with unresolved SSCs that remain published on the secure website are as follows: Armenia, Bhutan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Russian Federation, Liberia, Zimbabwe.
With information from A21
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