Category 1 Safety Rating’s Recovery Could Take Longer
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Category 1 Safety Rating’s Recovery Could Take Longer

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Fernando Mares By Fernando Mares | Journalist & Industry Analyst - Mon, 10/17/2022 - 14:36

In May 2021, the the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) downgraded Mexico’s safety rating to Category 2. Initially, the Mexican aerospace industry expected the FAA to restore Mexico’s Airport Category 1 status soon. However, after over a year and a half, the industry no longer expects this to happen in the short term. 

The National Chamber of Air Transport (CANAEREO) expressed its desire for a quicker recovery of the Category 1 rating, as it considers it essential for the development of the industry. Nonetheless, Diana Olivares, President, CANAEREO, admitted that the upgrade is difficult to obtain and that is neither in the Mexican government’s nor its airlines’ hands to speed up the process. “We keep working closely with authorities and all the airlines. We must keep working and waiting. It is not our call because it requires different audits, but we are united in tackling the issue. Both the private sector and the government are working closely together to recover the Category 1 rating,” said Olivares. 

Some believe that Mexico has not progressed as much as the government had previously claimed, after the hacktivist group Guacamaya revealed that the plan made by the Federal Agency of Civil Aviation (AFAC), which contained 39 observed points that Mexico has to improve on, is not advancing at a rapid pace. According to the leaked documents from Aug. 25, 2022, Mexico has only completed three of these problems, less than 8 percent.

As for the rest of the observations, only 11 reported progress of 50 percent or more while the other 25 observations reported less than 50 percent. Among the latter, four observations did not see any progress at all.

The leaked information contradicts Carlos Rodríguez, Director General, AFAC, who previously reported that those observations had 90 percent progress. “We have 900 inspectors… Despite remote training efforts, we cannot train every one of them at the same time, but we are technically done [with our improvements],” Rodríguez told Expansión. 

The observations include issues like unfavorable working conditions to retain talented technicians, including low salaries. Other observations included a lacking Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum (RVSM) system to track planes, an inadequate methodology to determine the need to hire more inspectors and insufficient training for these inspectors. The documents also pointed out that AFAC did not stringently apply its criteria for the airworthiness planes or have a system in place to define this concept easily. 
 

Photo by:   Reiseuhu

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