Brent Hannon/TAIPEI
In an attempt to rebuild passenger confidence in Taiwan's air safety following a spate of accidents, the country's Civil Aeronautics Administration has announced stricter penalties, including severe fines and grounding, for airlines not in compliance with regulatory standards.
Each of Taiwan's nine commercial airlines has been required to sub-mit training, operations and maintenance procedures and records to the CAA by 20 April. After a three week review, it will issue guidelines to each airline, and then conduct a series of inspections to enforce them, says Tsang Tsen-lien of the CAA flight safety division.
The policy was instituted by Lin Feng-cheng, Taiwan's new Minister of Transportation and Communications. The previous minister resigned after the 16 February China Airlines Airbus A300-600 accident which killed 202 people, and the 18 March Formosa Airlines Saab 340 crash in which all eight passengers and five crew died.
The CAA is seeking professional help from overseas, but has not yet established a "partnering" arrangement, says Tsang. Meanwhile, the ministry promises that four new CAA inspectors are to be hired, bringing the total of full time inspectors to more than 40. Besides the CAA programme, the Government has formed a five-man cabinet level flight safety committee.
EVA Airways junior vice-president K W Nieh expresses scepticism about the new programme. "The same people will examine the same companies the same way. How can they improve flight safety?" he says. The main problem, he maintains, is that many of Taiwan's airlines fail to tell the CAA about their lack of adherence to procedures.
Most of Formosa Airlines' fleet has already been cleared to fly again and it expects "imminent" CAA clearance to use its Saab 340s.
Source: Flight International
