The Guyana Civil Aviation Authority’s (GCAA) wide-ranging powers could be detrimental to the development of the sector, according to a recent Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)-sponsored study.
“The current degree of concentration of functions in the GCAA has potential implications that could prevent the healthy development of the civil aviation sector in the country,” the report done for the Union of South American States (UNASUR), says. The objective of the study was to investigate the main causes of the constraints to regional air connectivity between countries of the Guyana Shield and with the other UNASUR member states. It was submitted in November.
According to the report, it is generally agreed that an efficient institutional framework must guarantee the complete independence between its four main functions: policy making, technical regulation, operations, and accidents/incidents investigation. It noted that according to Guyana’s Civil Aviation Act of 2000, the GCAA is the entity responsible for the Air Traffic Control (ATC) services operation, the technical regulation of the country’s aviation, its economic policy making and the investigation of air accidents and incidents.
The GCAA is responsible for formulating and setting the aviation policy which comprises issues such as access to foreign carriers into the air transport market as well as access of local carriers into foreign markets, economic issues with respect to costs of air transportation, access of service providers, safety and security, environmental issues, etc.
The report says that despite the fact that the Ministry of Public Infrastructure executes specific tasks related to air transport policy making, the GCAA is the entity that negotiates the country’s bilateral agreements and is responsible for the sector’s economic regulation, which constitute the two most relevant tasks of economic policy making. Technical regulation is also conducted by the GCAA, which is empowered to oversee all technical aspects of the civil aviation sector according to the norms and recommendations of the Chicago Convention of 1944 and its Annexes.
Further, the operation of air traffic control services is also the responsibility of the GCAA, including communications, air navigation management, and meteorological service over the country’s airspace. The GCAA is also the authority responsible for conducting air accidents investigations.
Compromised
The report declared that the effective performance of the institutional framework may be compromised if the functions of policy-making and technical regulation are performed by a single body.
“It is important to assign these functions to independent entities to avoid any interference between these activities, which can go both ways. For example, it is essential for the technical regulator to be absolutely objective when carrying out safety oversights on local carriers, regardless of any policy that may encourage the protection of the local airlines. Another potential problem that may arise from the combination of these functions is the manipulation of technicalities to implement policy. Considering that bilateral agreements that govern air services are very complex and time consuming to negotiate, it is important that policies be stated in a clear and transparent way,” the report said.
It noted that the goal achieved by the separation of the economic and technical regulation functions is that the latter will not be influenced in order to apply a certain unstated policy.
Further, it says that it is essential to ensure the complete independence of the technical regulator from the operation of the infrastructure (air traffic control, airports or airlines) in order to ensure the correct implementation of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) Standards and Recommended Practices (SARP).
“If the regulator is somehow related to the operation of infrastructure (even through informal influence), it ends up regulating itself. The conflict of interest is such that regulation could become absolutely ineffective, seriously compromising the level of safety of the sector in general,” the report declared.
The report also pointed out that it is common practice for modern institutional frameworks to assure complete independence of the accident and incidents investigation body, by placing it on an independent board reporting directly to either the president or the parliament, bypassing any other ministry or public body.
“This is the only effective way to guarantee the impartial opinion of the investigators, independent from any decision that could affect another body within the government apparatus,” it said.
The report says that the lack of separation between the investigator (GCAA) and the technical regulator (again GCAA) creates a potential conflict of interest when the proper execution of the regulation could have played a role in an accident or incident.
“An accident or incidents could be the result of different forms of negligence from the technical side, such as lack of appropriate monitoring, slack controls, failure to implement international standards or aircraft manufacturer’s recommendations, improper certification of crews, aircraft or maintenance facilities, approving faulty procedures, among others. If GCAA regulates and investigates, it becomes “judge and jury” at the same time. A similar situation arises given the fact that GCAA is the organization responsible for both accidents and incidents investigation and ATC functions. Should the cause of an accident be related to the operation of the ATC service, once again GCAA would be investigating itself, creating an unhealthy conflict of interests and the possibility of an unsuccessful investigation,” the report says.
