Imagine general aviation airports that on weekends don't allow touch and goes and that limit departures to aircraft going cross-country only. Or, picture our familiar single-engine Pipers and Cessnas with huge exterior mufflers and exhaust pipes stretching under their fuselages. Worse yet, consider user fees for each contact with the air traffic system, starting with a charge for getting a preflight weather briefing. How about the scenario of being banned from using a major city airport? All of these are realities faced by general aviation pilots in countries around the world, offering a glimpse of what could happen in the United States if government, the FAA, or commercial airlines did not recognize our segment of air travel.
J.B. Hartranft, Jr.,the first leader of AOPA, realized early on that if general aviation interests were not represented worldwide, there would be a heavy bias in favor of the airlines and the military. Therefore, in 1962, Hartranft — along with the leaders of AOPAs in four other nations — founded the International Council of Aircraft Owner and Pilot Associations (IAOPA). Their principal aim was "to facilitate the movement of general aviation aircraft internationally, for peaceful purposes, in order to develop friendship and understanding among the peoples of the world and to increase the utility of the general aviation airplanes as a means of personal transportation."
While much of what IAOPA has accomplished relates to the free passage of aircraft between countries, recognition of private pilot certificates between countries, and the prevention of international airspace usurpation, it also provides much value to those of us in AOPA-United States. IAOPA activities serve as a distant early warning system to alert us to what may be coming to the United States sometime in the future.
A major asset of IAOPA is our official observer status, granted in 1964, in an aviation body that goes beyond national interests: the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which sets standards for the entire world of aviation. For more than 50 years ICAO has ensured the safe and orderly flow of air traffic across the world's borders. It is one of the 16 specialized arms of the United Nations, dedicated to standardizing the world's aviation laws, procedures, and processes.
Since the United States is a signatory to the Chicago Convention, which established ICAO, we are obliged to follow the rules of the air set forth by that body. While the United States has filed a substantial number of exceptions to ICAO's regulatory annexes, for the most part our Federal Aviation Regulations conform to those rules. The 18 ICAO annexes cover all aspects of civil aviation, from aircrew licensing, to general operating and flight rules, to required maintenance practices. If they change, the possibility of our own regulations' changing is heightened. If we can forestall a change in ICAO, it may never come before the FAA for inclusion in our FARs.
IAOPA representatives have traveled the world to participate in forums that have included flight crew licensing, all-weather operations, future air navigation systems, meteorological reporting, medical certification, and general operating rules. The successes of these delegates have possibly prevented many onerous rules from entering our regulatory system.
We are now entering a new era of world influence in aviation; the balance of power is subtly shifting from Montreal (ICAO headquarters) to the European continent. Active supranational organizations such as Eurocontrol, the European Civil Aviation Commission, and the Joint Aviation Authorities are shaping a new airspace, regulatory, and procedural structure for the European Community. Many of their mandates are being "harmonized" with the regulations of the United States and other countries, often at a pace and scope that transcends the ICAO structure. The front lines of tomorrow's rules and regulations have shifted to Brussels, Amsterdam, and Paris.
As president of IAOPA, I regularly have the opportunity to see the excellent work that our European and Pacific AOPA affiliates accomplish for us in these important new issues: closer frequency spacing in VHF communications radios, increased navigational accuracy standards, improved GPS receivers, further airspace stratification, and ATC user charges and fees for meteorological services are but a few. Without their efforts to squelch these initiatives, the battles they are fighting today may soon visit our shores. While Europe is the current hotbed of aviation activity, each of the 43 AOPA affiliates works hard to preserve and promote "general aviation and aerial work" (the ICAO definition for GA) activities within their spheres of influence. In recent months we have added several new countries to the council, as AOPAs have been formed in Russia, Portugal, Monaco, India, Poland, Mauritius, and Guyana. An AOPA-Mexico is about to be commissioned, and recent conversations are moving toward the organization of an AOPA in China.
AOPA-U.S. supports these efforts through our staff's technical expertise and financial support to IAOPA. Our dedication to the world of international aviation is not totally altruistic; the international aviation frontier is ours as well. The diverse and forceful voice envisioned with the formation of IAOPA has served us well and continues to strengthen and protect worldwide general aviation interests. This results in our being able to better serve you, our members, on not only the issues of today, but those that might be developing elsewhere in the world of aviation.
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