Anyone passing Vietnam airports, looking up and seeing a small aircraft diligently “ploughing” up and down, across and along the sky unlike the path of any normal passenger aircraft, it is the flight inspection aircraft doing its duty to ensure absolute safety for passenger aircrafts from all over the world.   

 

Flight inspection is an obligatory duty, a monitoring tool to ensure air traffic safety and to comply with ICAO regulations. Building capacity to perform flight inspection on their own has been the expectation and desire of many generations of leaders of Vietnam civil aviation industry ever since the 1980s. Whenever there is an aerial works completed but could not be put into operations in due time due to delay in flight inspection caused by inability to timely complete the procedures to hire foreign flight inspection team and aircraft as well as during meetings with the Ministry of Defence on monitoring foreign flight inspection teams to perform flight inspection service in sensitive air spaces, everyone unanimously nourish a dream of building a flight inspection team “Made in Vietnam”.

With a resolution to realize this dream, the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam assigned Vietnam Air Traffic Management Corporation to host and select appropriate investment plan for the investment project “Organization for provision of flight inspection services”. This guideline was also expressed in Decision 21/QD-TTg of the Prime Minister requesting Vietnam civil aviation industry to organize for provision of flight inspection services on its own by 2010. Air Traffic Technical Services Center (currently Air Traffic Technical Company Limited) was assigned to take charge of the project implementation.  

After 2 years of project implementation, in August 2010 the first made-in Vietnam flight inspection trips was confidently and efficiently organized in due course, satisfying technical standards, legal regulation with the following elements:

Flight inspectors and pilots are professionally trained by The French Civil Aviation Authority and licensed to practice in Vietnam by the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam;

The most modern flight inspection equipment CARNAC 30 is provided by SAGEM France and licensed to operate by Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam;

Flight inspection documentation is prepared by ATTECH engineers under the consultancy of the experts from French Civil Aviation Authority and approved by Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam;

The aircraft to perform flight inspection is King Air B200 provided by VASCO, its design was improved by SAGEM for flight inspection task and licensed to operate by  Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam.

You can feel the success of the project from the following conversation: “ILS/DME and airfield lighting system were completed, we request ATTECH to carry out flight inspection immediately to put the main runway into operation in due time” “Yes, we will do it right away”; or “Since when you are able to perform flight inspection by yourself, we feel relieved when granting you the flight permit”…

As for Air Traffic Technical Company Limited, to promote our brand name through developing flight inspection service is one important and long-term objective. When flight density increases, higher airport operation standards and more modern CNS equipment require improved quality of flight inspection service and increased number of flight hours. To meet such demand, ATTECH applied ISO 9001-2008 standards to flight inspection service. All resources required to perform this service are well managed and developed, each detected discrepancy is comprehensively handled, and each customer feedback is carefully investigated. In order to meet the demand for the development of a new CNS/ATM system, from 2013, ATTECH will start up its investment program in human resources and equipment system to satisfy the PBN requirements (GNSS and DME/DME technology). Determining that flight inspection is one crucial link in its career to ensure air safety, ATTECH performs:  

Non-stop innovation;

Efficient investment;

Professional staff;

Adept management.

To ensure that its flight inspection service complies with international and national standards and satisfies air traffic managers and operators alike.