MONTREAL, 29 April 2020: The International Air Transport Association (IATA) called on regulators to take urgent action to help civil aviation operate seamlessly and safely between states during the Covid-19 pandemic.
To help facilitate the restart of airline services when the virus is contained, IATA asked states to take the following immediate steps:
Work with the aviation industry to find temporary measures to ensure that licenses and certificates critical to managing aviation safety are extended to remain valid;
File their temporary measures with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO);
Recognise the measures of other states that are filed with ICAO.
Many aviation regulators worldwide have already taken the necessary steps to provide airlines and licensed crew with the required flexibility, such as extensions to the validity periods for licenses, ratings and certificates, so operational capabilities can be maintained.
However, to be effective, these measures must be filed with ICAO so that they can be visible to and recognised by counterpart states.
Without mutual recognition, airlines are faced with uncertainty over whether they might be restricted by the states whose territory they enter.
“We commend ICAO for their swift action to facilitate the sharing of states’ temporary regulatory extensions, making it easier for states to extend their mutual recognition,” said IATA’s senior vice president, safety and flight operations Gilberto Lopez Meyer.
At present, many of the world’s aviation regulators are not able to perform their standard administration of various licenses, as their operations have also been impacted by the Covid-19 outbreak.
