Wednesday, November 13, 2019

FAA's downgrade of Malaysian aviation - Impact to Malaysia's aviation

By now we would have read that the FAA downgrade of Malaysia's aviation safety rating has nothing to do with the airlines, but rather on the regulatory functions.  This has caused concerns over some of us, when does not know how it is going to impact our aviation sector. One director went further by saying that the FAA would not have done check on us until Airasia X had its flight to Honolulu. In fact, since 2003, the FAA had not had a check on us. Is it a blame on Airasia X, or he is just saying a fact.

That same person runs Time Dotcom. I think he may have said a factual matter, but does it matter? Should it be because of a flight route initiated to Honolulu, we should now be putting our house in order - safety that it?

As a customer to airlines and the aviation industry, we have been bombarded by continuous price increases over the last few years. We created MAVCOM in 2015 which some say overlaps the function of CAAM. We even pay RM1 to support MAVCOM each time we take a commercial flight. I am sure given the continuous increase in passenger traffic, they should be sufficiently covered financially. It is ironic, that the users are the one that usually covers the expenses of these guys whereas their functions should be improving the infrastructure and profile of Malaysia as an aviation and tourism hub. The winner has been MAVCOM and the country but the users are the one who pay.

When we have CAAM whose salary scale follows the government and it is supposedly insufficient to entice the experienced people to stay, we have MAVCOM as well, whose role is still unclear.

How does this impact Malaysia? We have built a solid industry. I think it is time to be more vigilant and have the input from the right group of people for our aviation to grow.

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