Designed to cut costs safe flying.


The idea, says Desmond Ross, is to be a cost cutter and a means of keeping an unending trail of auditors out of the hair of airlines and airport managers.

Ross is chief of the Pacific Aviation Safety Office, PASO. After a fairly long gestation, this has opened shop on the second floor of the old Banque Indo-Suez building in Port Vila.

PASO should shape up as a nicely knit exercise in regional civil aviation co-operation of the kind that has so far eluded the region's mostly struggling airlines.

As its name suggests, PASO is all about aircraft that are safe to fly in, safe airports, safe operational standards and that bugbear of the times, security that is actually secure.

By sharing the costs of running PASO, member countries should discover that what it costs them individually to do should drop by quite a lot.

PASO's gestation began in 1998/99 from the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat with input from islands governments and the Association of South Pacific Airlines (ASPA).

The founder members are Australia, Fiji, Kiribati, New Zealand, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

The Asian Development Bank is helping it lift-off with a US$1.95 million loan and a technical assistance package guaranteed by Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Vanuatu.

PASO is designed to become eventually self-supporting.

Ross, an airline man, became PASO's director last year after running the Vanuatu airport authority. He's been busy setting the office up while awaiting the arrival of ADB funds due about March when he'll be able to start advertising for technical staff.

“We're getting support from the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), Australia and New Zealand and the membership generally. The United States Federal Aviation Administration has indicated support and willingness to provide some technical assistance,” he says.

“We hope to be fully operational by the middle of the year with a couple of additional inspectors in my office.

The first part of the ADB package is a technical assistance project to run for about 12 months. ADB will invite tenders from consultancy firms with the winner tasked to work with PASO's permanent staff on reviewing the state of aviation law throughout the Pacific and running base line audits to spotlight what needs to be done.

PASO will next move from a technical assistance operation to a normal day-to-day operation. This will be regular inspections, audits and assistance to the states, “bearing in mind that we are by no means a policeman on the block,” Ross says.

“We are here to help member countries pass their ICAO annual audits. This is the main purpose of PASO, to try and ensure that member nations can meet their international obligations under the ICAO convention.”

The first two professionals will deal with airworthiness and flight operations.

“The areas we want to look at are air worthiness, flight operations, airports and aviation security. We are not going to take on air traffic management or air traffic services at this point in time-somewhat later.”

A country can be a PASO member and also be a signatory to the Pacific Islands Civil Aviation Safety and Security Treaty.

Tonga acceded to PASO but withdrew last April. Ross hopes the Tongans will return.

“The more members, the more effective we are and can better spread our costs and make it less expensive for everyone. The whole concept is about sharing costs to reduce them individually to each country.

“We believe Tuvalu is looking at joining us; it is looking at joining ICAO and we hope their next step will be to join PASO. The French territories will not join us directly but they are interested in what we are doing and may play an observer role.”

Ross says Fiji's comparatively well-developed civil aviation administration makes it a source of expertise for PASO.

“It is quite possible that we may use some of their staff if they have time and people available. One of the concepts is that not only will we hire fulltime staff but also use resources already in the region.

“We had an example only a few weeks ago where we grabbed a guy from Papua New Guinea to go across to the Solomon Islands at short notice for an air worthiness problem they have.

“The tasks awaiting PASO are variable depending on the country you're looking at, but there is quite a lot of work in most areas,” Ross says.

“At the end of the day the whole concept of PASO was born out of the results of the universal safety oversight programme ICAO has been running. These show clearly the areas to be worked on. ICAO auditors will be coming into the region in the next few weeks and their reports will give countries a very clear idea of what needs to be done.”

“What PASO hopes to do is cooperate with these people as far as possible and where practicable do one audit to cover two or three requirements. That way our members will not be tied up with a bunch of auditors from one week to the next.”