The UAE’s top aviation regulatory official has told AIN the strategy of the General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) on business aviation is to smooth the wheels of activity and to attract the right kind of companies.

GCAA director general, Saif Al Suwaidi, speaking exclusively to AIN, said, “We facilitate [this kind of] business. We aim to attract [it] to the UAE. I think we have provided a very good environment. The industry still has some challenges; we know about them. Some of these are outside our mandate.”

Although it appears that scheduled carriers are the organization’s priority, he said GCAA has “enough resources” to carry out tasks related to business aviation as well.

With regard to the state of the industry, he said: “I know that this business is subject to the economic situation in the region. I think this will pass, and business aviation will resume its position again. However, the good will stay and the bad will leave. This is what we are looking for.”

The GCAA has achieved high scores in recent ICAO safety audits. In 2015, it attained 98.86 percent in ICAO’s Universal Safety Oversight Audit Program, the highest tally ever achieved under this scheme.

“ICAO recently acknowledged the UAE and 13 other states when the Council president awarded them certificates of recognition at our 39th Assembly for their recent and exemplary USOAP performance,” Anthony Philbin, chief communications officer for ICAO, told AIN.

In terms of the GCAA’s efforts to harmonize with EASA’s business aviation framework, MEBAA chairman Ali Alnaqbi agrees that no other CAA is doing more in this respect.

“I think it’s true…we are very lucky to have such an understanding group of people working at the UAE’s CAA, led by HE Saif Al Suwaidi. His directions to his staff to support business and private aviation are highly appreciated by MEBAA and by the International Business Aviation Council [IBAC]. I think they are working very closely with us, listening to us, and are alive to our demands,” he told AIN.

Aircraft operators are also happy with the GCAA’s role. “The A6 registration, which is governed by the UAE’s GCAA, is a fantastic registration. The Civil Aviation Regulations [CAR] are amongst the best in the world,” commented Dr. Mark Pierotti, COO of Abu Dhabi-based Al Jaber Aviation.

“We are very lucky to be governed by such a progressive, understanding and supportive civil aviation authority. The GCAA is supportive, and the Department of Transport (DOT) is supportive too,” he said.

Gray Market

The DOT has stopped the gray charter market, where foreign-registered aircraft competed with UAE-registered aircraft in for charter flights in Abu Dhabi, he said. “Over the last two years, the DOT Air Transport Section has worked closely with the operators, and we have managed to stop gray market operations in Abu Dhabi. They have done a great job. Dubai hasn’t done this yet.”

DC Aviation Al Futtaim’s Holger Ostheimer also commended the authority. “So far, we observe that the capacity of the GCAA is stretched. But you will see hardly any other EASA or non-EASA organization, you will see no other country, striving so intensely to try to comply with the EASA regulations,” he said.

“By 2017, the GCAA will probably be the aviation authority with the highest level of compliance with the core EASA regulations [outside the EU area] anywhere. If you look at it from an EASA members’ perspective primarily, where each member of the EASA community wants to have relief for their national interpretations of regulations, the GCAA is slightly out of that picture. The GCAA can only harmonize, but its clear aim is to implement the EASA regulations in full.”

He said that for DCAF, as a business jet operator, the aircraft affected under the GCAA Flight Operations regulations are the commercially registered ones, those registered as A6. That requires special consideration for the demands and constraints of such operators.

“Those discussions with the GCAA are ongoing and do require very special consideration, as opposed to those regulations that are on the table and that are predominantly focusing on the operational life of a scheduled aircraft operation, which does diverge from that of a business-jet operator,” he said.

“Looking into the maintenance side, the application of regulations is very strict. However, the GCAA is undertaking a great effort to support its licence holders, both on the AOC as well as maintenance side, so as not leave them standing out in the rain.”

Empire Aviation Group CEO Paras Dhamecha said that with 100 business jets in the UAE today, including private, family and presidential, the GCAA has its work cut out to handle the volume.

“The GCAA is a very highly respected and well-run organisation. They have to be well-run for a jurisdiction the size of the UAE, for the amount of aviation, as general and private [aviation] and the airlines have grown. The authorities have done very well to keep up with two aircraft a month at Emirates, and an aircraft a month at Etihad, and then create a space for business aviation to grow,” he said.

“They maintain a certain standard of quality and if you cannot maintain that then they make difficulties for you. I guess the easiest thing to do when that happens is to say that the regulators are overregulating. They are not. They are trying to keep this place safe. The airspace is so small, that to have the number of aircraft that they manage in the airspace is in itself a task.”

Due to activity by the UAE military, only 49 percent of UAE airspace is available to civil operations. Mikael Lees, CEO of Finland’s Hendell Aviation, on secondment to GI Aviation as a technical consultant to obtain its AOC, said the GCAA had been very supportive from the start of GI Aviation’s plans to obtain a UAE AOC, expected this year, to launch single-engine charter operations using Pilatus PC-12NGs.

“They have been very interested, and at no point have they said that it’s not possible. They have always been ‘open-minded.’ They pretty much follow EASA regulations, although there are some differences in that. The transition from EASA to here has been straightforward.”

EASA Compliance

Ismaeil Al Blooshi, the GCAA’s assistant director general for aviation safety affairs, said the objective of GCAA’s EASA compliance program was to be ready in early 2018. “It’s a major task. We have done most of the groundwork, studying where we are compared to EASA.”

He said that the regional market is strong. “There are people saying that there is a decline. We did not see a decline. We see things moving. We have deliveries all the time; new aircraft are coming. Some aircraft already in the region are registering in the UAE. We have seen [Saudi aircraft moving to base themselves in the UAE]. We have seen that, [due to the ease GCC nationals enjoy in establishing companies in the UAE].”

Compliance with ICAO standards is the GCAA’s priority, he continued. “We are happy with the maturity of the business aviation industry in the UAE. The companies that are here have established themselves. They have a [very good] understanding of their business. That makes us more comfortable,” he said.

“On the other hand, we have also learned. We did not have the same understanding of the business 15 years ago. We have matured with it. We have a better understanding of their needs, and I think that we are able to accommodate [them] wherever we can. We always have problems, new challenges, mainly because each case is not the same. It is not like ‘mass-production’ airlines; with business aviation, each case is different, and you have to have a clear state of mind to handle it.

“Whenever we could accommodate their needs, especially on the maintenance side, we changed our requirements. Maybe at one stage we lacked the resources to deal with business aviation, but not today. We have sufficient pilots and engineers, both in number and in competence, to cover operations,” he said.

“There is an inherent risk in aviation, we all know that. No one can claim we live in a zero-risk environment. Risk is always there. Our job is to identify it and bring it to a controllable and acceptable level.

“When it comes to business aviation, I think the knowledge that people have acquired today of their operations and of the type of risk that they face, given the nature of the operators, means maybe the risk is much less than other industry segments.”

Fleet age is also a factor. “Most of the fleet we have is young. We don’t have aircraft that are 20 years old, with high hours. Most of the fleet we have is relatively young. This gives you much comfort.”