Major aviation forum opens…Int’l aviation regulator pushes harmonisation of regulations

Nov 22, 2018 News

The first day of the Air Transport Meeting of the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) kicked off yesterday, with the focus on a major discussion on harmonising air transport regulations throughout the different regions.
The panel discussion, which was led by ICAO’s Council President, Dr. Olumuyiwa Bernard Aliu, explored the three main focuses for harmonisation of regulations, including taxation, competition between member states, and consumer protection.
The panel discussed how harnessing and maximising the benefits of air transport requires enabling regulatory environments and quality infrastructure commensurate with the level of predicted traffic growth.
Taxation on airlines may be levied for many reasons, ranging from environmental protection to the enforcement of other competitive aviation regulations. The intersectional nature of taxation in aviation with other regulations makes it a difficult system to regularise across the CARICOM region.
When it comes to consumer protection, many states, in recent years, have adopted regulatory measures concerning access to air travel for passengers with reduced mobility, price transparency and obligation of the carrier toward passengers in case of flight disruption.
At the industry level, many airlines have adopted voluntary commitments to clarify or improve their policies with regard to certain customer services often in response to public pressure.
In order to keep their national airlines competitive in a liberalized market, some governments are tempted to lend support to their airlines through means that could deny the airlines of other states a fair and equal opportunity to compete. Ridding the region of this sort of competition is on the agenda for ICAO.
Sidney Fraser, a representative of the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA), told the panel that he believes the CARICOM region is quite unlikely to achieve uniform regulations in those three areas because they are of the most controversial areas to seek harmonisation.
The panel discussed the fact that convincing member states to cooperate to regularise these types of policies will be difficult because aviators have yet to display the benefits of a harmonised, safe and secure regulatory system to their respective governments.
The objective of this Air Transport Meeting is to decide on practical solutions to remove existing regulatory impediments to air transport liberalization and to finance the development of quality aviation infrastructure.

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