Aviation Safety Concerns Rise in Central America Following Recent Crashes

In light of the recent plane crash in Honduras, and several other aviation incidents, concerns over flight safety in the region have intensified. With many Belizeans traveling back and forth in the region and internationally, Love News spoke with the Director of Civil Aviation, Nigel Carter, who indicated that strict regulations are in place globally to mitigate such incidents and ensure aviation safety.

Nigel Carter, Director of Civil Aviation: “There are 193 countries that have signed onto the Chicago Convention or the Convention on International Civil Aviation. Those countries have all agreed to implementing the convention and the 19 annexes that come along with those conventions. Those annexes contain aviation standards and recommended practices. Now it’s basically through their aviation legislation and regulations implement the conditions that have been established in the convention and the associated annexes. You are looking at volumes and volumes of standards and recommended practices which range everything from the licensing of personnel to rules of the air to operation of aircraft, air worthiness of aircraft, registration marks, units of measurement, air traffic services, aeronautical information services, aeronautical telecommunication standards, aerodrome implementation, the safety and transportation of dangerous goods and severe others, the management systems, aviation security and several others. So it’s really and truly volumes of information that we have to look at and it’s a very rigorous certification process that operators go through before we can say that they operate safely.” 

The most recent statistics show 19 plane crashes across the globe with fatalities since the start of this year.