Jurisdiction in airline safety matters is a mess if the experiences of British Airways, the UK Civil Aviation Authority and Malaysia Airlines are anything to go by.
The present "system" for overseeing the safety standards of an airline once it leaves its country of registration is, just not working. Which other industry, when it operates outside the state where its headquarters is based, enjoys something akin to diplomatic immunity from law or regulatory enforcement?
Since it first came to light that a foreign airline had regularly been arriving at London Heathrow Airport dangerously short of fuel, extensive gaps in national and international regulatory and oversight systems have become painfully apparent.
The simplest shortcoming in this case is the poor regulatory oversight exercised by the aviation authority of the airline's own country. The carrier's fuel policy, as practised, had been shown to be inadequate for at least two years, but the authority failed either to detect or to correct it. It is not enough to quote, as the national authorities have done, the regulations they have put in place. If rules are not enforced, they might as well not exist.
The second shortcoming is lack of formal provision for monitoring and reporting unsafe practices by airlines when these take place abroad. A start has been made in the USA with its International Aviation Safety Assessment programme, which checks the oversight exercised by the aviation authorities of countries whose airlines operate into the USA. Europe has its relatively new Safety Assessment of Foreign Aircraft programme, under which airline safety failings reported to the authorities are committed to a central database to spotlight operators with consistently low standards.
This is not working properly, and will not unless it is backed up with a change in jurisdiction for regulatory enforcement.
In the Heathrow case it has become apparent that, because there is no formal or compulsory reporting chain for incidents involving foreign airlines in the UK, the incidents can go unreported by those who know about them, or the reports have an ill-defined status within the UK authorities. The only defined protocol is that the appropriate national aviation authority should be advised. It is unlikely that the UK is unique.
National authorities must be properly empowered to monitor safety standards by all airlines on their territory, whatever the nationality. All oversight systems should include legally enforced, compulsory safety reporting by all airlines and by all the companies that supply services to them, of events which come to light on their territory. What have safe airlines got to fear?
Source: Flight International
