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PHILIPPINE aviation safety has been put under a cloud of
doubt as the United States’ Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) downgraded it to Category 2 from
the top—and considered fully safe—Category 1 on findings
that as a port of air-travel origin, it has failed to
comply with aviation standards set by the International
Civil Aviation Organization (Icao).
Category
2 requires that carriers, although still allowed to fly
to the United States at their current levels, will have
to be under strict FAA surveillance.
Reacting
to the FAA move, the chief of the Air Transportation
Office (ATO) said Monday the only way for them to meet
the standards is for the President to sign the Civil
Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) bill so
they would have enough financial resources to fund
safety, maintenance and improvement programs.
“Let the
government approve the CAAP bill so that our airports
and their navigational aids would be upgraded and we
would be able to come up to the standards set by the
FAA,” said ATO chief Daniel Dimagiba during an exclusive
interview with the BusinessMirror.
The Ato
has a yearly budget of P1.3 billion, spent mostly on
salaries and maintenance and operating expenses. He said
that if Ato is to upgrade with modern navigational aids
and communications system, it would need an additional
outlay of about P1 billion more.
As of
now, he added they have faulty navigational aids that
need repair and passenger-terminal buildings have leaky
toilets and dirty facilities.
Dimagiba
said the Ato licensing section has not been modernized
up to now and still issue licenses made of cardboard
instead of plastic laminated ones, common in most
branches of government. “We cannot afford to hire a
librarian, who should take care of our extensive
documentations.”
The most
glaring of all, Dimagiba pointed out, is the lack of
qualified check pilots, who should be trained in
simulators available only abroad. He added that it costs
$20,000 per training session, an amount that is “beyond
our meager budget.”
The CAAP
bill was passed by both Houses of Congress last December
and now awaits the signature of the President. He said
the prospective law’s “most outstanding feature is that
it would have fiscal autonomy and be able to dispense
most of its P3-billion income for local aviation
modernization.”
Inocencio Incierto, chief of Air Navigational Services,
said new navaids would cost about P120 million, a
communications system about P150 million, and the
upgrading of the Area Control System, which is the
outlet for the Tagaytay radar, needs another P150
million.
The
Philippines is not alone in Category 2, being joined by
19 other countries. The first batch of this category,
including the Philippines, are those operating in the US
at the time of the assessment: Bangladesh, Cote
D’Ivoire, Ghana, Guyana, Indonesia, Ukraine, Serbia and
Montenegro, the former Yugoslavia, and Nauru. |
