Be it political unrest or the unrelenting battle against poverty, the United Nation’s world food programme makes safety its priority when flying into danger zones.
After securing their aircraft with food and medical supplies, UN pilots face a race against time to deliver vital aid to hungry mouths across the globe.
The world food programme, which recently held the first Global Aviation Safety Conference for Humanitarian Air Operations, flies some 100 chartered aircraft a day to various trouble spots around the world.
“We focus on what the people need,” says Samir Sajet, the programme’s Middle East aviation safety officer. “In Pakistan, after the earthquake last year we had to act very quickly. We employed 50 helicopters from different parts of the world and had to battle the bad weather to enter the country.”
Victims of the disaster, which killed more than 300 people and left thousands homeless, were given food, blankets and medical supplies. “It was a fight against time to get into the country before the snow set in and it was difficult to operate this number of helicopters in such a small area,” adds Sajet. As well as helicopters, the food programme also deploys several different types of plane, all of which are chosen based on route, destination and the scale of operations. “In the Pakistan operation we used a number of helicopters including the MI8, MI26, Kamov and Pumas.”
The UN operates in notoriously dangerous parts of the world and, as a result, employs only the most highly experienced pilots. “Although we ask for international standards we have our own additional requirements in terms of experience, hours flying, and training programme,” explains Sajet.
“For example they must have familiarity of the areas they’re flying to. The infrastructure in African airports and planes for example is not as safe as most western countries and we are facing big challenges in Afghanistan because of the dangers of mid air collision.”
With high terrains, a complicated aerospace structure and minimum vertical separation between aircraft, pilots need to be very experienced to negotiate problems and obstacles. “In addition we require pilots to complete an extra safety requirement course before they are able to fly,” explains Sajet.
As world conflict rages and climatic conditions continue to prevent food growth, more than 800 million people from developing countries have been left starving. But according to UN officials, only 8% of hunger’s victims die in tragic high profile emergency situations, the vast majority are simply trapped in impoverished villages or slums.
And while Sajet highlights the difficulties and dangers of flying to war and disaster zones, he also adds that non conflict areas of the third world can create potential problems for pilots due to lack of airport infrastructure. “We are operating in difficult environments,” he explains. “But we always look for acceptable levels of safety and we won’t go beyond that. We always have a risk assessment and after that we see if an operation is safe enough.”
Although the organisation has had very few serious accidents, and no fatalities, management is still keen to improve safety standards further. “Our mandate was and still is to develop safety culture within our operations. We ask pilots to report every single small detail about what happens on a flight,” explains Sajet.
African and Afghanistan air strips often host difficult landing terrain with little or no safety equipment. “Sometimes we’re landing on an airstrip which is curved so the runway is not straight. We often face obstacles such as birds on the runway and won’t send any aircraft without a proper risk assessment to the area.”
To help pilots mitigate the risks, a comprehensive airstrip manual has been developed. The folder, which is known as ‘a jungle jeppeson’, contains detailed information about the various landing strips in a region. “Pilots learn things about different areas and collect information about this particular landing strip, so other pilots, when they visit that area, have information to rely on. We update the information regularly in terms of obstacles, or whether an air strip is safe to land,” says Sajet.
“The great challenges pilots face is the availability of runways and suitability of landing. We run into problems with navigation and bird strikes; but on top of this it’s the aviation culture or safety culture which we are trying to improve.”
For Conny Akerstrom, regional safety officer for Eastern Africa, adequate route information is one of the key aspects to a safe successful trip. “We look at operators’ procedures to make sure they take the correct steps for the areas they are flying into,” he explains. “We need to make sure they have correct route information, including charts and maps before they go out. They also need route information for the terrain into which they are flying.”
Equally important is the quality of the aircraft itself. “We evaluate an aircraft before it flies. It must operate to the [International Civil Aviation Organisation] ICAO’s standards,” says Akerstrom.
The planes, which are always chartered, originate from various parts of the world and must all meet strict international safety standards. An ongoing problem for the organisation is the high number of unsafe aircraft parts sold cheaply to African airlines.
“A big part of operations on the maintenance side is to look at where the spare parts come from and make sure they are actually certified,” explains Akerstrom. “Often operators will have spare parts but no traceability of it and don’t know where it’s coming from. We need to make sure all parts are traced back to the manufacturer before we use them.”
Meanwhile, the world food programme’s management has to contend with some complicated political situations, which can in some cases slow aid delivery. “We cannot operate without government cooperation. They must accept us to facilitate operations,” explains Sajet.
“We faced some big problems in Myanmar after the cyclone. But we had long talks with the government and finally they understood we were only there to help those in need.” Similarly, during Israel’s recent three week offensive against Gaza, the UN was only permitted into the area for short junctures to deliver vital aid packages.
However, according to Sajet, there are always alternative ways to deliver aid if it’s unsafe to fly. “There are sometimes difficulties in transporting aid via aircraft so we use buses and ships. Everyone understands that we are purely a humanitarian agency delivering food and non food items to the people who need our help. We will not go into politics.”
Sajet believes the world food programme, which in 2007 delivered some 3.3 million tonnes of food to 86.1 million people, has been well supported by ICAO. “But now we are trying to involve more counterparts like IATA and the flight safety foundations. We’ve used the safety conference to find information and distribute information about areas where the risk is high,” he adds.