US FAA recognizes excellence of flight safety in Azerbaijan

Our country for the first time was granted Category 1 safety rating by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) following an FAA IASA (International Aviation Safety Assessment) flight safety assessment in the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2014. This high rating gives Azerbaijani airlines the right to implement direct regularly scheduled air flights to the United States. 

However, during the extensive audits conducted in 2015 by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), lowering the level of compliance with international standards (from 58% to 43%) caused downside risk in the safety rating of the FAA to Category 2 and imposition of limitations on flights to the USA. The experience of countries downgraded to this category shows that the process of restoring a high rating can be very difficult and might last for many years.

From this point of view, in the last two years, serious measures have been undertaken to strengthen state control in the field of civil aviation.

Thus, by corresponding decree of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the State Inspectorate for Flight Safety in Civil Aviation was established, necessary amendments were made to the Law “On Aviation”.

At the same time, significant work has been done to implement the state program on civil aviation.

As a result of these measures and the work organized by the State Civil Aviation Agency, the adopted rules, the international audits conducted in 2017-2018, as well as the assessment of the US FAA were positive results.

Thus, after assessing the compliance with the requirements of the international standards of the Chicago Convention by FAA, Azerbaijan was granted the highest Category 1.

This is the result of the special attention of the leadership of the Republic of Azerbaijan to provide safety of flights and further development of civil aviation.