Dec 24,2021 – Çağla KALKAN
Obstacle Management is one of the core operations in aviation. Although it plays an important role in aviation safety and flight operations, an unsolvable coordination problem arises in almost every country.
The coordination issue can be divided into two parts. The first one is data collection. There are many countries today that still do not have a clear distribution of responsibility for who should collect the data. While Civil Aviation Institutions are in charge for data collection in some countries, other government agencies are responsible in others. In some other countries, both institutions are involved, while in others there is no clear job description for this. This situation leads to a deadlock on many safety-related issues. This issue is sometimes brought up to the agenda for other reasons, such as tourism and national defense, and it is also attempted to be solved with additional budgets. However, in many countries, this issue remains unresolved.
Another issue of coordination in Obstacle Management is the problem of updating information. Regular processing of new obstacle data, tracking of obstacles and NOTAMs that no longer exist are the main items of the update. Unfortunately, too many actors are involved here, and this situation can lead to inter-institutional power competition in many countries. Managing this systematically with laws and regulations without the assistance of digital tools results in an overabundance of labor requirements. The development of digital tools, on the other hand, is a slow process due to the bureaucratic structure of state institutions. Therefore, the coordination problem is experienced in almost every country today, and Obstacle Management continues with the old methods. Giving the global rate of digitalization, the attitude of institutions towards aviation on this issue is not very encouraging for the new world.
Recently, some developed countries have decided to invest in digital tools to address the coordination problem in Obstacle Management. For example, England predicted that this coordination problem would cost the country £3.8 million over the next five years and acted to digitalize. However, for this to happen, institutions must be well-functioning and have well-equipped employees. Many countries will take a long time to get to this point.
Despite international organizations efforts to raise awareness about coordination, sanction power is left to the initiative of local governments. In such a scenario, if the knowledge of the employees in the institutions is not at an optimum level, this issue may be overlooked. Even though these institutions are attempting to raise awareness, it is difficult to discuss about the desired level of awareness currently.
Obstacle Management is one of the most important aspects of safety. It is analogous to a seatbelt. Its worth cannot be realized unless an accident occurs. Local institutions must raise awareness of this issue and create demand in the private sector for digital solutions. Blowing in the wind of such complex problems can result in serious safety weakness due to accidents caused by poor data quality as well as loss of labor and time.