An Aeroméxico plane takes off from Mexico City International Airport last week.PEDRO PARDO / AFP
Mexico failed the US aviation safety assessment and says it does not understand why. Since the Federal Aviation Administration downgraded it to category 2 on Tuesday, one of only eight countries in the world in that position, the Mexican aeronautical authorities have not been able to communicate with the US authorities to clarify what remains to be accomplished. Although it calls the decision "total surprise", the Federal Civil Aviation Agency (AFAC) recognizes that there are several issues to be resolved that depend on other government secretariats. The unexpected degradation was the outcome of a process marked by haste and poor communication between examiner and examinee.
The Mexican aeronautical authorities never wanted to have this audit, at least not this year.
Before it began in October, the AFAC tried to postpone it and even sent a written request.
The agency was working with a quarter of the staff due to covid-19 restrictions, which limited its performance.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did not take this request into account and began the first phase of this audit to which the US periodically submits all countries with air connections.
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The start of the process coincided with a change in the leadership of the Mexican agency. Shortly after starting the audit, at the end of November its owner resigned from the position. Two months later, the government appointed Carlos Antonio Rodríguez Munguía, a retired major general from the Air Force. The statement announcing his appointment shows that the new general director has extensive experience in military aviation but none in civil, the agency's area of competence.
Meanwhile, the audit progressed. The FAA broadcast the first 22 "finds" as early as October. Among them, an increase in the number of inspectors, an increase in their salaries to match those of the private sector, and some modifications to the Civil Aviation Law to give the AFAC more powers. In February, in a second phase, another six were added, of a minor nature. In total, there were 28 aspects that, according to the US agency, Mexico had to address in order to comply with the minimum international standards established by the International Civil Aviation Organization.
The AFAC claims to have started working on the findings from the beginning, but times were upon it. Just two months after the second phase, the FAA sent its inspectors to Mexico in the third week of April to check the progress. The visit caught the AFAC by surprise. “We didn't know when the final discussion was going to be. They told us a week in advance that they were going to come to carry out the visit ”, explains the general director Rodríguez Munguía.
The official maintains that, at that time, they had an advance of 75% of compliance. Instead, the FAA concluded that only four of the 28 points were closed. In a meeting held on April 23, the last day of the visit, the AFAC agreed with the auditors that it would continue to send them the news through a digital repository. There they were uploading multiple documents in the last three weeks. However, they never received an acknowledgment or confirmation from the US side. "It has this policy of not having interaction with the audited State," says Rodríguez Munguía.
A week before the announcement, the AFAC felt confident that it could avoid downgrading. He considered that they had an advance of 97% and that they were already "practically finished". On Saturday, agency officials and the Undersecretary of Transportation, Carlos Morán, had a meeting with the head of the FAA and, to be sure, they presented him with a document with links to the documents that they had supposedly already sent. The US official told them that "he would send it to his people," according to Rodríguez Munguía, and the Mexicans were left with "almost certain" that they had passed the test.
Three days later, those same officials welcomed the loss of category 1. The FAA had detected "several areas of non-compliance with the minimum standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization," read the statement published on Tuesday.
As a result, Mexican airlines were prevented from opening new routes to the United States, a total brake on their international growth just as the recovery after the COVID-19 hit began.
The pending ones: salary increases and hiring of inspectors
One of the theories of the Mexican authorities is that the FAA did not take into account the documents provided after the auditors' visit ended in April, despite the fact that both parties agreed that the path would remain open. “With the evidence that we continue to send, we think that we have already complied. We are inferring that they probably closed on April 23, the last meeting we had with them, ”says Rodríguez Munguía.
One of the issues that put the FAA's schedule to the test were changes to the Civil Aviation Act. In October, the requested modifications began their way through the bureaucratic labyrinth. The Executive of Andrés Manuel López Obrador submitted the draft reform initiative to Congress on April 21, two days before the end of the auditors' visit. The Chamber of Deputies took just a week to approve it and the Senate endorsed it two days later, on April 30. However, the amended law was not published in the Official Gazette of the Federation until May 20, almost three weeks later.
The machinery could not have been forced more, says Enrique Beltranena, general director of Volaris, the largest Mexican airline by number of travelers and one of the most affected by the degradation. “The law was taken out in record time. We started reviewing drafts in February, March of this year. It was an important merit ”, says the manager. “As much as possible was done. It didn't give physically, it didn't give time ”.
The leader of the National Chamber of Air Transport and representative in Mexico of the International Air Transport Organization (IATA), Cuitláhuac Gutiérrez, agrees that there were problems meeting the schedule. “Maybe things could have been done to better respond to the times. The FAA expected another type of progress, ”explains the expert, who closely followed the audit. "Until the last minute we hoped that communications between the government and the FAA would be positive."
There is some confusion surrounding the findings presented by the audit. Some were not accurate enough. The United States recommended, for example, a salary increase for inspectors to match the private sector, but did not specify the amount. The Mexican agency has had to make its own calculations with the help of IATA and companies in the sector and has decided on an increase of between 35% and 50%. With the leeway left to the AFAC to resolve this and other findings, the question remains whether the changes were sufficient to satisfy the FAA.
Beyond the inaccuracies, the AFAC recognizes that there are still issues to be resolved, some dependent on other secretariats. There are three regulations "pending validation" and 80 of the 180 new inspectors planned for this year have to be hired. "They were authorized, but it is a process that does not take place in a day," justifies Rodríguez Munguía. In addition, the salary increase, one of the findings that the FAA presented in October, has not yet been authorized. "The ball is in the field of the Ministry of Finance," says the director of the AFAC. The official still does not know when it will be resolved.
The Mexican Government has moved between the discourse that minimizes the impact of the degradation and the one that asks to solve it "as soon as possible." President Andrés Manuel López Obrador stated this Thursday that the situation "is not so serious." "The national airlines are very busy, they have a lot of demand in the domestic market," he said at a press conference. “They [the United States] have rules, they impose them all over the world as it usually happens in other things. Sometimes there are countries that feel like the governments of the world ”.
On the other hand, the Ministry of Communications and Transportation requested an urgent meeting with the FAA on Wednesday and announced a working table with representatives of three other areas of the Government, including Finance and Foreign Relations, and directors of commercial airlines.
The government hopes to solve the mess in less than four months, but the uncertainty is total.
"The auditors did not tell us what it is that, in their opinion, we have not yet met," says Rodríguez Munguía.
"We have not had any communication with them."
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