PLANE TALK
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
INTRODUCTION This is an article about aviation international maintenance affairs, not the other type. Now that I have your attention, I will proceed. When I arrived in a HQ job as chief of manufacturing and maintenance for Transport Canada, I reread my job description and confirmed that international policy in those areas was under my range of responsibility. It soon became a large part of the job and had many interesting challenges both nationally and internationally. International agreements have a great effect on the work of DOMs both in large and in small enterprises.
HISTORY Credit for the majority of the text in italics belongs to the Web-based National Encyclopedia. The write up has been modified by this writer but the general history remains. The first international civil aviation conference, held in 1910 and attended by European governments only (since transoceanic flight was then regarded as no more than a wild dream), was a failure. Almost another decade elapsed before an international convention, signed in Paris in 1919, created the International Commission for Air Navigation. The commission was to meet at least once a year and concern itself
34 |
DOMmagazine.com | may 2016
with technical matters. An international committee of jurists was also established to concern itself with the intricate legal questions created by cross-border aviation. In 1928, a Pan-American convention on commercial aviation was adopted at a conference held in Havana to deal with problems then emerging as international flights became more frequent in the Western Hemisphere. The tremendous development of aviation during World War II demonstrated the need for an international organization to assist and regulate international flight for peaceful purposes, covering all aspects of flying, including technical, economic and legal problems. For these reasons, in early 1944, the U.S. conducted exploratory discussions with its World War II allies, on the basis of which invitations were sent to 55 allied and neutral states to meet in Chicago in November 1944. In November and December
1944, delegates of 52 nations met at the International Civil Aviation Conference in Chicago to plan for international cooperation in the field of air navigation in the post-war era. It was this conference that framed the constitution of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) — the Convention on International Civil Aviation, also called the Chicago Convention. This convention stipulated that ICAO would come into being after
BY ROGER BEEBE
the convention was ratified by 26 nations. In order to respond to the immediate needs of civil aviation, a provisional organization was created and functioned for 20 months until, on April 4, 1947, ICAO officially came into existence. In essence, the conference was faced with two questions: (1) whether universally-recognized navigational signals and other navigational and technical standards could be agreed upon, and (2) whether international rules concerning the economics of air transport could be established. One group of countries, led by the U.S., wanted an international organization empowered only to make recommendations regarding standard technical procedures and equipment. In its economic aspects, these countries believed, air transportation should be freely competitive. One objective was to obtain maximum technical standardization for international aviation, recommend certain practices that member countries should follow, and carry out other functions. Countries ratifying or acceding to the convention thereby agreed in advance to conform to the greatest possible extent to ICAO-adopted civil aviation standards and to endeavor to conform to ICAO- adopted recommendations. The first limited aviation
regulations came into being in Canada in 1919, and was one page of rules (unlike the thousands of pages we now have). It was not long
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68