Upon CAAC’s application, ICAO conducted a special assessment of China’s State Safety Program (SSP) from May 22 to 27. The safety oversight audit carried out by ICAO mainly focused on four areas of SSP including legislation, organization, continued airworthiness and accident investigation, which aims to further promote the implementation of SSP in China, improve its practicability and efficacy, and enhance civil aviation safety in China.

Wu Chengchang, Chief Safety Inspector of CAAC, said at the kick-off meeting for the special assessment that as one of ICAO’s Part I Council members, China has been conscientiously implementing ICAO’s requirements on SSP establishment. In 2009, CAAC incorporated SSP-related tasks into its 12th Five-Year Plan of Work Safety of China Civil Aviation . In 2015, it issued China’s Civil Aviation Safety Program and initiated a number of pilot projects on safety performance management for enterprises and CAAC safety oversight evaluations to further promote the development of the industry’s Safety Management System (SMS). At present, the Regulation on Civil Aviation Safety Management (CCAR-398) has been approved at CAAC’s executive meeting. It is a regulation specifically designed for safety management duties and process, which aims to ensure a systematic and consistent framework of regulations relating to civil aviation safety management and enhance the overall efficacy of risk prevention. As for this assessment, it is regarded as a thorough examination of the overall design, implementation and progress of SSP and offers an excellent opportunity to detect and address relevant problems on safety management. CAAC will take the assessment seriously and honestly.

It is learned that SSP represents one of the key safety initiatives taken by ICAO. In 2013, ICAO explicitly required contracting states to develop and implement their State Safety Programs in order to enable their civil aviation safety performance to reach an acceptable level. Meanwhile, in the Global Aviation Safety Plan 2014-2016, ICAO requires each contracting state to gradually build a more robust safety oversight system, implement SSP and realize the planned objectives for global aviation safety: for short term, to establish an effective safety oversight system before 2017; for medium term, to comprehensively implement SSP before 2022; and for long term, to establish a predictive risk management system before 2027.