KATHMANDU, JUN 15 - The government has enforced the new Civil Aviation (Aircraft Accident) Investigation Regulation 2014, which gives legal authority to an independent body to probe aviation accidents/incidents.
Due to the lack of an all-powerful independent investigation body, most of the air crash reports were criticized as “superficial”.
The new regulation, prepared in line with the requirement of the International Civil Aviation Organization (Icao) Annex 13 Aircraft Accident and Incident Investigation and compatible with the modern era aviation, aims to ensure high-level of efficiency and quality in civil aviation safety investigations.
The regulation was published in the Nepal Gazette on May 26 with immediate effect. It replaced nearly five-decade old Civil Aviation (Investigation of Accidents) Rules 1967.
The sole objective of the new regulation is to prevent future accidents and incidents, said Buddhi Sagar Lamichanne, joint-secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation. “With this statutory obligation for independent probe, there won’t be any bureaucratic and political interference on any aviation accident and incident investigation,” he said.
Nepal’s non-compliance with Icao standards stands at 45 percent, against the global average of 38 percent. The latest Icao audit report shows Nepal has performed poorly on accident investigation fronts, with the compliance rate of 20.41 percent, compared to the global average of 53.86 percent.
Government and Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (Caan) officials have been stating the regulator was not able to pass legislation related to accident investigation earlier due to the absence of the parliament, leading to poor performance on accident investigation fronts.
The new law has also made it mandatory for the government to make public every air accident and incident report, said Lamichanne. “In past years, investigation reports used to be kept hidden,” he said, adding around 80 investigation reports have been prepared so far, but only a few of them have been made public.
Likewise, any investigation’s draft report should be sent to the state of aircraft manufacturer, state of victim, state of design and registration, including the Icao and other aviation watchdogs, to collect their comments before publishing the final report. The old rule did not have any such provisions.
The new law has also defined the qualification and experience for an individual to be eligible to become an investigator of a member of an investigation committee to ensure the investigations are fact-based, Lamichanne added.
The regulation has also defined the duties and working areas of the investigation commission and the ministry for developing a database of accidents and incidents, setting up emergency plans to be implemented in the event of an accident, preserve crash sites and carry out fact checking before allowing any external intervention.
As there was no clear rule about who was responsible to act on any accident and incident before, the new regulation has mandated the ministry to immediately dispatch its technical team for preliminary investigation to a accident/incident site.
Under the new law, the ministry has to investigate serious incidents that occurred due to technical problems and bird strikes, among others.
Source: http://www.ekantipur.com
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