Pakistan International Airlines' Capt Amjad Faizi is well placed to speak about the national infrastructure inadequacies at the root of the aviation safety problems which Third World countries face: his own country can lay claim, economically, to be in the Third-World league. His airline, however, has a good safety record, and therefore its management can claim to know what it is like trying to run a safe airline in a nation with tight budgets. So Faizi can get away with describing mercilessly the system faults which a US safety guru would avoid naming for fear of giving offence which could be counter-productive.
"What ails the Third World," says Faizi, "can be summed up in a few commonly shared factors." According to Faizi, these include:
- slackness of regulatory functions;
- inadequate professional training;
- non-professional management of airline safety;
- mismanagement and severe scarcity of funds;
- ageing fleets.
Source: Flight International
