Flight safety assessment
The Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB) is the regulating agency for all the civil aviation activities in our airspace. It issues licence to pilots, flight engineers, navigators, aircraft maintenance engineers (AME), flight operation officers(FOO), aircraft maintenance organizations(AMO), aviation training organs, ground handling, tech handling agencies, certification of air transport operations(ATOL), aircraft leasing, route station etc.
CAAB also issues certificate of airworthiness (C of A) to civil aircrafts which allows the concerned aircraft to fly for one year provided it is kept airworthy by licensed aircraft maintenance engineers (AMEs) of different operators.
Oversight on all activities of the officials mentioned above are handled by officials of the flight safety directorate of CAAB. As flight safety itself is a high tech subject, officials looking after such important aspects are required to be selected properly, trained and kept up to date with the change of modern aviation trends. CAAB at present has only a handful of officials entrusted with such enormous responsibility.
In the last 10 years, the attitude of the government towards the aviation industry has changed. This obviously is a good sign for development of civil aviation in the country. But we should also keep in mind that unprofessional money mongers do not come in the market who can only cause disaster to the sector.
At present, the airworthiness division which is (like one of the main landing gears of an aeroplane, the other two being Flight Inspection and Air Transport) is suffering from acute shortage of inspectors. Out of 7 (seven) approved positions it only has 2(two) inspectors, the other five positions are yet to be filled in. To address the above issues I would like to humbly suggest a few steps for the authorities to consider, so that the existing problems can be overcome in near future:
a) Immediately all 5 (five) positions of AELD should be filled in.
b) New entrants should be adequately qualified having relevant aircraft maintenance experience as mentioned in CAAB's Service Rules.
c) They should have hand on experience on transport category aircraft and its documentation procedure.
d) Auditing the aircraft and facilities should be taught hand on by qualified and experienced safety auditors.
e) They should undergo classroom lectures on airworthiness audits by existing and former flight safety officials.
I wish this letter will draw the attention of the authorities concerned.
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