Land ministry takes direct control of air navigation facility inspections

The land ministry will take over inspections of air navigation facilities itself, ending a delegation that had left the checks to its regional aviation offices and the national air traffic headquarters, under a presidential decree that took effect Tuesday.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said the change is intended to make the inspection work more objective. The revision was also drawn up to strengthen the objectivity and oversight of inspection work ahead of an International Civil Aviation Organization safety assessment, the government said.

The revision deletes two provisions of the enforcement decree for the Airport Facilities Act — the items in Article 55, Paragraph 1, Subparagraph 61, Item Ka and Paragraph 2, Subparagraph 1, Item Ka — that had served as the legal basis for delegating the inspection duty. With those clauses gone, the minister holds the authority directly rather than passing it to the regional aviation administrators and the head of the air traffic headquarters.

The ministry opened a comment period on the measure on July 15 that ran through Aug. 25 before it was signed by President Lee Jae-myung and promulgated as Presidential Decree No. 36799.

A companion revision to the enforcement rules of the same act was put out for public comment on Oct. 29, reworking the installation permits and implementation plan approvals for air navigation facilities that had been delegated to the air traffic headquarters. That follow-up measure, announced as a Ministry of Government Legislation legislative notice, aligns the rules with the reshuffled decree.