Peru fears it could lose the Category 1 safety status it only regained last July if it extends supervision to civilian domestic flights flown by its military.
Peru's concerns follow confusion over the US Federal Aviation Administration's right to consider foreign domestic issues under its safety assessment programme.
Peru's Air Force recently started carrying civilians on internal flights and is seeking legislation required under Peruvian law to authorise this. The proposed law would bring such flights under the control of Peru's civil aviation authority, the Director General Transportes Aereos, which opposes any supervision of air force operations.
Two months ago a parallel question arose in Colombia, where the FAA noted that AeroCivil was not supervising a military-operated domestic airline. Lack of civilian oversight was one of several deficiencies the FAA told AeroCivil it needed to correct before Colombia could be upgraded to Category 1.
Dr Juan Garland, DGTA's director of international affairs, told a recent aviation conference in Lima that Peru's Air Force appeared to satisfy local requirements for an operating certificate, but the DGTA was still reluctant to assume jurisdiction. 'Category 1 might be jeopardised,' warns Garland, 'because of the condition of the military's fleet.' Among aircraft the Air Force is using for civilian flights are Russian-built Antonovs designed for military transport. Garland fears the FAA might conclude that the aircraft do not meet civilian safety standards.
The aim of the FAA's international safety assessment programme is to ensure that foreign airlines flying to and from the US are supervised by civil aviation authorities which comply with International Civil Aviation Organisation safety standards. The FAA assesses that compliance and ranks countries accordingly. This has been a major issue in Latin America, where those assessments profoundly affect air service with the US.
Officials heading the FAA's programme insist it has no jurisdiction over foreign domestic issues and will not assess a country based on them. As Peru illustrates, however, local authorities are not confident that FAA inspectors honour this distinction. FAA field officers concede that they draw no distinction between international and local operations when assessing Icao standards. 'We evaluate a country, not its individual airlines,' stresses an FAA inspector.
Latin authorities have often held their tongues about FAA intrusion in local affairs as the FAA sometimes serves their purposes. For example, Colombia's airline association has restrained its criticism of FAA involvement in a local issue because it wants AeroCivil to be responsible for overseeing Colombia's military-operated airline.
David Knibb
Source: Airline Business