ALTA president Roberto Kriete says his top priority is safety, but ALTA needs help from outside the association to improve the region's recent problematic safety record.
"We want the governments to require IOSA compliance to certify airlines," Kriete told ATI at the 2010 ALTA Leadership Forum.
He points out this year all four fatal crashes of Western-built aircraft in the Latin America and Caribbean region involved airlines that are not IOSA certified. IOSA is IATA's operational safety audit, which ALTA at the beginning of this year made a requirement for maintaining membership.
Kriete points out that there hasn't been a single ALTA member crash in two years, which shows the success of the IOSA programme and ALTA's efforts aimed at reducing the occurrence of unstabilised approaches, which are the cause of most of the region's crashes. "We have decided ALTA will focus on very few issues. One of the issues is safety," he says.
The high accident rate in Latin America is currently driving higher aircraft insurance rates in the region. But Kriete in his opening speech at the forum said ALTA members deserve lower rates given its recent solid track record. He says the gap in insurance costs between Latin America and the US "is still way too high we need to bring those insurance costs in line with US and European rates".
Kriete says ALTA is also pushing for the creation of a single regulatory authority in the region. In addition, Kriete is calling for the creation of "a framework and environment to exchange information" with regulators "without any punitive penalties".
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
