NAC Canada fined $95,000.00

[Kip Powick]

NAV Canada fined $95,000 for pilot misinformation

Safety was not jeopardized, inspectors say, but continued errors included incorrect frequencies for airport towers

GLORIA GALLOWAY

From Monday's Globe and Mail

April 14, 2008 at 4:33 AM EDT

OTTAWA — NAV Canada has been fined $95,000 by the federal government for repeated errors in the information it provided to pilots, air-traffic controllers and others in the aviation industry that were found over many years.

Transport Canada, which levied the penalty, says safety was not jeopardized, but the misinformation included such things as incorrect frequencies for airport towers and wrong directions for approaching airports during landings.

When Transport Canada inspectors saw several occurrences of the same type of error and no effort to correct them, "then we started to realize maybe there is more of a systemic problem here and we investigated further," Jennifer Taylor, the director of national operations for the federal department, said in an interview.

"Over a course of time, when their corrective action plan wasn't resolving the non-compliances, that's where we issued the monetary penalty."

NAV Canada, a private company that has managed Canada's air-navigation system since 1996, is responsible for providing air-traffic control, updates on aviation weather, and aeronautical information.

The latter, which is published every four weeks in documents for pilots and air-traffic controllers, includes things such as navigational charts, the heights of obstacles on those charts, and airport data including communication frequencies, minimum altitudes and correct approaches to runways.

Anything that comes to NAV Canada attention between those publications is sent out on what is called the NOTAM (notice to airmen) system that pilots are required to read before taking off. All of the information must meet International Civil Aviation Organization standards.

But Transport Canada memorandums, obtained by Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin using access-to-information legislation, show there were problems with that information dating back to at least 2000.

NAV Can promised in August of that year to "take all steps" to respect the process it was required to follow. But that promise was followed by a series of meetings, detection notices, "oral counselling" and presentations related to non-compliance issues that stretched on to 2006.

"The violations with NAV Canada would have been errors in a frequency for communication or errors in a [directional] heading on a procedure," said Ms. Taylor. By "procedure," she said she was referring to landings.

In April of 2006, Transport Canada slapped NAV Canada with a notice that it was being fined $195,000 for 27 violations of Canadian aviation regulations. NAV Canada admitted having made the mistakes but, by last year, had bargained the fine down to $95,000.

The company has received three additional notices of fines in recent months. Those are under appeal and officials will not divulge what new errors have allegedly been committed.

Ron Singer, spokesman for NAV Canada, says his company's mistakes were minor.

For example, "in one of our publications we used the acronym NA instead of writing out Not Authorized," he said.

In another, he said, an annotation was not cross-referenced properly from one book to another."

"So we would categorize these as not any threat to safety. These were technical violations." And, he said, there has been significant process improvement in the past couple of years.

"Since 2006-07, we have more than doubled our staff working in aeronautical information services, from 43 to 90. We also have contractors that we work with. So we have well over 100 people working on the development and provision of aeronautical information services. This has been a priority."

The company has also spent $9-million on improving the management of aeronautical information, the production of documents and the development of a production process for digital maps.

[shockwave]

Now if we can only get YYZ to actually adhere to the departure and landing runways issued in the ATIS prior to 0630L and after 0030L, talk about mis-information. Can't they just add something like "for A/C departing 0630L or later expect rwy--" I can't believe that after 15 years I sill get issued a clearance for departure on 33R at 0610L only to be amended 15 minutes later to 06L because of the 0630am noise cancellation.....we know how the game works but what about the foreign crews that do their best preparing for a runway in the ATIS that they are never gonna get !! What a joke and somewhat of a safety issue me thinks

[J.O.]

Great point shockwave, and it's one that's been addressed with NavCan at multiple meetings. They're well aware that operators consider every runway change as an opportunity for error. Unfortunately for them, their hands are somewhat tied by the current process of traffic management between NC and the GTAA. I'd also like to see the "shift change" that contributes to the problem be scheduled to a more convenient time.

[Thebean]

Great point shockwave, and it's one that's been addressed with NavCan at multiple meetings. They're well aware that operators consider every runway change as an opportunity for error. Unfortunately for them, their hands are somewhat tied by the current process of traffic management between NC and the GTAA. I'd also like to see the "shift change" that contributes to the problem be scheduled to a more convenient time.

So what.....

The fine is a cost, and like all costs at Nav Can, they are ultimately paid for by the customer.....the airlines....

[J.O.]

So what?

I know you're not a pilot but anyone with an interest in a safety critical industry (like yourself) should understand that an agency who is responsible for disseminating safety information must have a system in place to ensure that the information is accurate and communicated in a timely fashion. While the NC spokesperson declared that these were "minor" errors, the fine was issued because the errors were indicative of a flawed system which could have allowed a much bigger (i.e. more safety-critical) error to slip through.

That's what!

[ccairspace]

...the fine was issued because the errors were indicative of a flawed system which could have allowed a much bigger (i.e. more safety-critical) error to slip through.

That's what!

Spot on!

ccairspace