Civil Aviation Authority explains airlines grounding

On June 17th 2014, Uganda’s air transport industry managers Civil Aviation Authority withdrew Air Operator Certificates (AOC) for three airlines that were registered in Uganda and operating international flights. East African Business Week’s PAUL TENTENA talked to Mr. Ignie Igunduura the CAA’s Public Affairs Manager to find out what exactly happened.

Q. Have the ICAO audit results come out?

A. Uganda is a member of International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) a United Nations agency responsible for establishing standards for civil aviation. ICAO member states are obliged to comply with the international standards and recommended practices. They normally take 45days from the audit day to announce the results. The 45 days are not yet over for them to announce.

Why is Air Uganda accusing you of failing the ICAO audit hence the withdrawing of Air Operator Certificates (AOC) for International airlines registered in Uganda?
 
To ensure compliance with international standards, ICAO conducts periodic safety and security audits in all member countries. Accordingly, Uganda was audited by ICAO in November 2008 under the Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme (USOAP). Following the 2008 audit, a Corrective Action Plan (CAP) was developed to address the audit findings. The corrective measures taken included formulation of amendments to the CAA Act Cap 354, strengthening the Uganda safety and security inspection system, advanced training of inspectorate personnel and review and alignment of civil aviation regulations in accordance with ICAOs International Standards and Recommended Practices. Initial findings by auditors on CAA were assessed as satisfactory and earned Uganda an overall safety performance improvement of 10% from 49% to 59%. It is not true that we failed the ICAO audit.

In a press statement you published last week, you said Air Uganda was found to have deficiencies that they must work on before re-licensing. What are these deficiencies?
 
Actually it’s not only Air Uganda. Uganda International Airlines have airlines manuals that are revised regularly through established and approved procedures. Any amendments must be submitted to CAA for approval before they are inserted in the manuals. During the audit, some controlled manual copies of these airlines were fund to have hand written amendments and revisions, photo copied pages, and others had been altered and were grossly different from the copies at CAA and pages which had super impositions.

Others were not original approved pages and had not been amended yet amendments were approved.

Air Uganda personnel also displayed high level of incompetence by submitting to auditors, CAA unapproved soft copies, presenting three different uncontrolled versions of the aircraft minimum equipment list, keeping unmarked For reference Only Manuals together with Controlled Manuals contrary to the industry practice.

Air Uganda also presented a computerized Quality System that failed to indicate calibrated tools expiry dates to the auditors and failed to present to the auditors approval and contract documents of the maintenance service provider.

You withdrew AOC for three operating airlines. Why it is that only one operator is moving from one media house to the other explaining. Where are the others?

Even us we’re wondering. Instead of working on the re-certification process, our colleagues are running to the press. The problem of Air Uganda arose from gross negligence when appearing before the ICAO auditors. The airline deployed unprepared personnel to handle the audit.

Secondly, after certification of Air Uganda in October 2013, CAA carried out bi-annual surveillance missions.

In April 2014, CAA visited the maintenance organization for Air Uganda where it was discovered that the Airline had violated its maintenance scope. The Maintenance Organization had low maintenance capability. CAA instructed Air Uganda to revert to the agreed level until it improved its maintenance capability. TransAfrik was found to be carrying items that were not authorized in their Air Operator Certificate. The re-certification process is ongoing and all the three are involved at stage three.

Air Uganda in their statement said the ICAO audit was only targeting regulators. Is this true?

And it’s where they go wrong. If the audit was for regulators…….why did they visit their premises? The audit was for the state and not only CAA. All industry players were audited and those found with deficiencies had AOCs withdrawn.

 When the ICAO Team came to Uganda. What were they looking for?

The ICAO Coordinated Validation Mission came to establish the status of implementation of the agreed upon Corrective Action Plan of 2008. They also wanted to see the implementation of the recommended amendment of the Civil Aviation Authority Act, organizational set up, accident investigation, air navigation services, aerodromes, Ugandan international airlines, aircraft maintenance centers and aviation training institutions.

Now that Air Uganda has suspended their operations and returned their leased aircraft. What hope should Ugandan and East African air transport users have from CAA?
In order to bridge this gap, we have approached and been approached by Ethiopian Airlines and RwandaAir to start picking up passengers from Entebbe and taking them to destinations they have not flown before. We have granted Fifth Freedom Rights to those two airlines to mount flights. Ethiopian Airlines has been already granted the Entebbe- Juba route. Precision Air has asked to do the Entebbe-Kilimanjaro to Dar es Salaam. This is of course in line with the re-certification process which is ongoing.

Any other issue CAA wishes to tell Air Transport users?

CAA applies a rigorous/thorough certification process to international air operators which, if fully complied with, would ensure safe operations. We’re responsible for industry oversight while the air operators are directly responsible for the safety of their operations. Air Uganda ignored CAA’s advice to follow guidelines for designation as a national airline. The guidelines include reasonable ownership of the airline by the Government or people of the state designating the airline.

Nonetheless, CAA went out of its way to negotiate Bilateral Air Services Agreements with countries like South Africa and Singapore which accepted to waive the ownership close to enable Air Uganda to operate. Kenya and Tanzania accepted designation of Air Uganda as a gesture of good relations between the EAC States and insistence of Uganda CAA.

Air Uganda was advised to desist from the practice of mis-informing the political leadership and seeking favor every time CAA raised aviation safety issues.

- Source: http://www.busiweek.com