Flight safety oversight in Canada plummets: UN agency

MONTREAL — Canada has received a C grade on flight safety oversight — down from an A+ almost two decades ago and far below most of its peers — according to a draft report from a United Nations agency.

The confidential audit from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), obtained by The Canadian Press, says the country has fallen precipitously to a score of 64 out of 100, with three areas of safety oversight in particular seeing a big dropoff: aircraft operations, airports and air navigation.

Canada’s score topped 95 per cent in the UN body’s previous report in 2005.

The UN body recommended that the federal government establish a system to lock in full regulatory compliance by airlines and airports, shore up certification related to dangerous goods, and ensure proper training and fatigue management for air traffic controllers.

A shortage of the latter and a trend toward off-loading safety responsibilities from government to industry remain concerns across the continent, said Ross Aimer, CEO of Californiabased Aero Consulting Experts.

“Every other day, you hear there’s what we call a near miss. I don’t like that term ‘near miss,’ I would like to call it a near collision,” Aimer said.

In September, two Air Canada planes brushed each other on the ground at Vancouver airport, tearing off parts of their wingtips in a low-speed collision.

In March, an air traffic controller cleared an Air Canada Rouge plane for takeoff from Sarasota, Florida, just as an American Airlines jet made its final approach on the same runway, prompting the American pilot to pull up abruptly — one of a half-dozen incidents of conflicting runway use the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board was investigating at the time.

However, the Canadian government stressed that the UN report was not a measure of the country’s safety performance and that it did not note any issues requiring immediate action.

“ICAO has not identified any significant safety concerns with Canada’s civil aviation system, and we know our country’s air sector is among the safest in the world,” said Laura Scaffidi, a spokeswoman for Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez.