Report: Aviation safety in Israel neglected
State comptroller says government delaying implementation of recommendations on grim situation of Civil Aviation Authority, failing to combat downgrade of Israel's aviation security ranking by US Federal Aviation Administration
Only three years ago, the Lapidot Committee ruled that the situation of aviation safety in Israel was serious, warning that it would continue to deteriorate if immediate action were not taken, but the committee's recommendations were not fully implemented, State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss rules Monday.
According to the comptroller's report, only 29 of the committee's 75 recommendations were fully implemented. Fifteen recommendations were not implemented at all, and 31 were partially implemented.
Lindenstrauss urged the bodies "to work without delay to complete the implementation of all the Lapidot Committee recommendations."
Ben-Gurion Airport. Starting to implement recommendations (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)
A year after the committee published its recommendations, in December 2008, Israel suffered another blow, when the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) decided to lower Israel's aviation security ranking to category 2. Such a move could mean freezing commercial agreements, which would not allow submitting requests for increasing flight frequencies, adding landing times, changing or adding destinations, etc.
According to the comptroller, "These limitations could have a significant economic impact on the competition between airlines flying on the US-Israel route." According to the report, Israel has been aware of the faults for a long time.
In the meantime, the government has held discussions and exerted efforts to return Israel's ranking to category 1, but to no avail. "In the current situation, Israel's reputation has been damaged and could cause economic damage to the airlines," Lindenstrauss wrote.
180 accidents in 4 years
The comptroller also looked into the investigation of accidents, reporting some 180 accidents from 2005 to 2009, most of them involving light planes. In addition, thousands of incidents took place, 131 of them defined as serious.
According to the comptroller's examination, only a small percentage of the recommendations issued by the chief investigator following those incidents have been implemented.
"The Transportation Ministry should look into the reasons for the low percentage of implementation of the recommendations," Lindestrauss stated in his report.
The Israel Airports Authority said in response, "All the recommendations which could have been implemented under a short timetable were implemented, while the recommendations whose implementation is more complicated are in the process of implementation.
"The IAA council has approved a sum of NIS 2.7 billion (about $720 million) for the implementation of the recommendations, and the IAA is meeting the planned timetable for implementation."
The Transportation Ministry said in response that "the ministry will implement all the required lessons and has already begun fixing the faults mentioned in the report." The ministry's director-general, Yaakov Ganot, has ordered a through procedure for dealing with all of the report's findings.
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