WILLEMSTAD – The four countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands will jointly oversee cross-border air traffic control under a new protocol aimed at enhancing aviation safety while sharing costs and expertise. The announcement comes in a letter from Peter Steinmetz, Director of the Curaçao Civil Aviation Authority (CBA), to Minister Charles Cooper of Traffic, Transport, and Spatial Planning (VVRP).
The goal of this collaboration is to achieve an implementation score of at least 80 percent in audits conducted by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). According to Steinmetz, harmonized regulations will allow the overseeing authorities to exercise standardized oversight, enabling them to share inspector resources and knowledge, while making joint audit programs more efficient.
While the cooperation between Curaçao, Aruba, Sint Maarten, and the Netherlands has been informally carried out, it is now being formalized. ICAO does not recognize informal collaboration as valid evidence, and the Netherlands is urging all countries to sign the protocol promptly so that preparations for the ICAO audit, scheduled for the first quarter of 2025, can be completed.
The ministers of the four countries had already signed a cooperation protocol for civil aviation in 2017. The new protocol now structures the oversight of shared services with clear guidelines and decision-making rules. The sharing of expertise and resources is expected to lead to a more efficient approach, according to the involved parties.