The Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has agreed to amend the ICAO Conflict Zone Information Repository (CZIR) procedures. This follows on its assessment of a report following the scheduled one-year review of the CZIR.
CZIR postings will now be restricted to information which strictly pertains to conflict zones, and posts will only be made immediately available when the risk information is submitted by the State where the conflict is occurring.
Provision has also been made to continue to permit a State to post conflict zone warnings regarding another State’s sovereign airspace, when there is no disagreement between the submitting State and the implicated State.
States retain the right to post global aviation safety and security risk warnings on their respective national websites, and the ICAO CZIR will now be amended to include links to those individual State pages.
States will also continue to make use of the existing Aviation Security Point of Contact (POC) Network to share critical security-related threat and risk information.
“Importantly, ICAO Member States continue to have the obligation to promptly communicate any potential risks to safe and secure civil aviation operations in their sovereign or delegated airspace, including those relating to conflict zones,” clarified ICAO Council President Dr. Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu. “These latest decisions will help us to undertake further improvements in information sharing techniques by Member States, ultimately aimed to provide air transport operators an integrated information resource within their operational flight planning systems.”
These latest Council amendments seek to realize a more effective means for States, civil aviation stakeholders, and the traveling public to have facilitated and updated access to as many conflict zone risk assessment sources as possible.
