Aviation safety is paramount

Editorial

DON’T look now, but if you’re an airline passenger who arrived from abroad last Thursday from morning until early the next day, you have to thank your lucky stars—along with the good weather and competent pilots—that you managed to land in one piece to the welcoming arms of your loved ones.

Why? According to our Ninoy Aquino International Airport reporter, the facility’s main navigational and landing aid, called VOR (very high frequency omnidirectional radio range), conked out at 10:40 a.m. on Thursday and was expected to be restored only by 8 a.m. the next day.

This is the third time the landing aid had gone off the air since last month, according to airport officials. However, no flights were diverted to Clark or Cebu since the weather remained clear and visibility was considered good enough to allow safe landing and takeoff without the VOR.

Last month, on October 9, the VOR also went off the air for two hours but was later repaired. In 2008 the Manila VOR and Instrument Landing System went off the air for two months, causing dozens of flights to be diverted.

The latest outage couldn’t have come at a bad time: members of the International Civil Aviation Organization (Icao) were in town to evaluate whether to restore the Category 1 status of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (Caap).

Not surprisingly, Caap flunked the review. But that had nothing to do with the VOR outage, airport officials said.

With another evaluation of Caap due in February 2013, it is high time for the agency to kick out the jams and roll up their sleeves.

The bright side of an otherwise bleak scenario for the airline industry is that European countries are willing to reconsider the existing ban on Philippine carriers.

A total of 27 European countries have banned the entry of Philippine carriers into their airspace after Icao noted the government’s alleged failure to comply with minimum international aviation-safety standards.

Aside from Icao, the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has also ranked the Philippines as a Category 2 market because of safety considerations. The FAA grade prohibits local airlines from expanding operations in the United States.

We cannot overemphasize the urgent need for Caap to do its work so that the country can conform to international aviation-safety standards.

If the government wants to achieve increasingly higher numbers of tourist arrivals in the years ahead, then it should accelerate all efforts to improve airline safety.

Caap should waste no time in addressing the technical issues raised by Icao and the FAA. Our continuing Category 2 status from international aviation safety regulatory agencies is an embarrassment for the country and does not speak well of the agency’s competence and efficiency.