ICAO has lifted a safety red flag imposed on Thai carriers, AFP (Agence France-Presse) reported, a move expected to bring relief to the country’s aviation sector.
Thailand’s aviation had in 2015 failed an ICAO audit, which had identified 33 “significant safety concerns (SSCs)”, which impacted the sector’s safety credentials and introduced flying restrictions.
Now free of the status, Thai carriers are can “fly anywhere in the world”, the AFP report quoted Thai prime minister Prayut Chan-o-cha as saying.
According to the Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand (CAAT), the decision to remove the red flag came after an ICAO audit of CAAT from September 20-27, where CAAT’s progress and corrective actions taken to resolve the 33 SSCs were reviewed. The ICAO audit team also made industry visits to two airlines that were recently re-certified with Air Operator Certificates, CAAT stated.
Thailand airlines continue to hire pilots with very little and poor training, and 0 experience. The airlines have been told to falsify records in order to satisfy ICAO auditors. The maintenance is also lacking in experience throughout the countries aviation industry. I have spent the last year on request from one of the Thai airlines to help them get out from under their well deserved red flag. After much frustration and hard work, nothing has changed except the altering of documents, falsification of records and a little house keeping. It is sad that ICAO didn’t bother to look deeper below the fraudulent surface.