ICAO demands a permanent investigation body for air incidents
September 8, 2016-Kathmandu
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has demanded its contracting states, including Nepal, to initialize a separate authority to investigate air accidents or serious incidents involving public air transport within November 10. The requirement came as a conclusion of meeting of the Asia Pacific Accident investigation Group held at Japan, suggested as per amendment 15 to ICAO Annex 13.
Suresh Acharya, joint secretary at the Aviation Safety Division of the Tourism Ministry said, “Setting up an independent bureau or commission is a necessity and a requirement of the global aviation industry.” He added that CAAN will work forward to initialize the committee soon as an urgent need in the alarming situation of prone air crashes and accidents.
The authority should be independent to any other organization and out of influence of any regulating body making a sole objective of accident investigation to prevent any future incidents.
The current practice in Nepal is to form a temporary investigation committee following any incident that occurs, and the reports generally prepared by them are controversial and heavily criticized. A formation of permanent investigation body led by experts is supposed to ensure quality of investigation to further help to improve the safety of aviation in Nepal.
ICAO has also promised to offer any help required by the authority during the process of formation and investigation. Specially after a series of fatal crashes of average 2 passenger aircraft each year ICAO has warned red on operations among the eight critical elements of safety oversight.
ICAO has also marked Nepal Airlines unsafe and European commission has banned the airlines for past three years.
