ICAO WORKING GROUP IN NAU

As it was announced, on July 25-27, 2016 the National Aviation University was holding a meeting of ICAO Working Group (ICAO AVSEC Panel Working Group on Training). Its organizer is the ICAO Institute  (NAU). The meeting was opened by the First Deputy Minister for Infrastructure of Ukraine Eugene Kravtsov. According to the agenda, there were discussed very important issues of the improvement of specialists’ training and upgrading in the field of aviation security.

Director of ICAO Institute, Professor Galina Suslova, commented on the results of the meeting.

- I would like to emphasize two ideas. Firstly, ICAO Working Groups deal with the issues only initiated by any country member of ICAO, if the importance of this issue is recognized by most countries. So, the issue of the improvement of specialists’ training and upgrading in the field of aviation security is one of the priorities. Secondly, ICAO Working Group has come to Ukraine for the first time. This is a significant recognition of the positive experience that our country has got in this regard. After all, the only center for upgrading training in the field of aviation security in Eastern Europe has been working at ICAO Institute since 1996.

Galina Suslova told that as the result of fruitful work, leading experts have made a series of amendments to the existing annexes in the Convention on International Civil Aviation concerning the training of experts on aviation security. First of all, there have been developed provisions of global strategy for training specialists for aviation security and, then, the positions for training personnell on combating cyberterrorism. Thanks to these issues, there will be developed a course to identify cyber threats and, what is more, cyber threats images will appear on the screen of X-ray introscopes in the control room. All the documents elaborated by the group will ultimately be approved by the Council of ICAO. Many levels of adoption of ICAO documents takes place in accordance with harsh procedures as the final document must be approved by 191 member countries of ICAO.

There is one more important consequence of the fact that the ICAO team of experts had been working in Ukraine. As Galina Suslova highlighted, after a three-hour guided tour across Kyiv and the National Aviation University, the experts’ impression about our country has changed radically. If their impression of Ukraine had been formed by TV programs showing ruined, bombed houses and wild dogs everywhere, after the excursion across the capital the guests expressed their firm belief that it is possible to send here people for training.