How to recover Category 1

Diplomatic language has many nuances that need to be understood and translated into media language. The recent visit to Washington by Mexican officials in whose hands and heads rests the future of Mexican aviation is an example that the bilateral relationship with our neighbors to the North still has much to teach us about what someone called “distant neighbors.”

While here there was talk of an action plan that the US auditors accepted, there this interpretation was measured and there was talk of a “good meeting” with positive prospects. Spot.

For the officials of the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States (FAA), the matter of downgrading to Category 2, to which they subjected Mexican aviation, has a first and last name and does not belong to any person in particular: calls improvisation and the well-known “here it goes” with which we Mexicans usually solve our problems.

No one doubts the ingenuity and ability to improvise of Mexican technicians. It is even considered a virtue at certain times and in certain areas. But the airline industry is not governed by those principles. In aviation we talk about Processes, Systems, Programs, KPI’s (Measurable Objectives) and compliance in times and forms. For this, the security systems of the States, of the government structures, of the aviation companies and even of the crew members in particular exist.

The problem of improvisation in this field has already become recurrent. The FAA comes and audits the aviation authority in Mexico and always finds the same problems. And after the same problems (sometimes aggravated) the same excuses, the same promises, the same breaches. And that has a cost not before the FAA, which is the least of it. It has a cost in our air transport industry that every once in a while it has to start over, it has to reinvent itself because 3 or 4 airlines have already gone bankrupt, because the airports in which millions of dollars were spent have already become white elephants, because the bilaterals that we sign with so much paraphernalia are taken advantage of by our counterparts and their airlines, and not by our airlines that have to juggle to survive.

How to get out of the vicious circle and enter the virtuous one? It’s not a secret. First of all, we must start from the fact that what cannot be measured cannot be improved. That is, it is necessary to set specific objectives and specific deadlines. And fulfill them! This implies long-term commitments and that the proposed goals coincide with what is stipulated in the best practices worldwide (that is, the annexes of the International Civil Aviation Organization), managed by personnel who remain.

The rest follows from there: if there is no consensus, it will be difficult for the entire industry to move at the same pace, that is, we need a public policy that includes the visions, needs and commitments of all the agents in the sector.

And finally, let’s stop milking the AFAC cow, which generates 2,000 million pesos that are subtracted from it and only a quarter of it is assigned as a budget. It is not easy, but it is possible.

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