ICAO 8984 PDF

INTRODUCTION

Note.— The text and paragraph references of the Standards and Recommended Practices quoted in this manual are valid as of the date of publication. As ICAO Annexes are amended frequently, this manual may not always be updated in a timely fashion that keeps pace with the evolution of Annex 1. Therefore it is strongly recommended that the reader obtain and keep up to date his1 own copy of Annex 1.

The Chicago Convention

The Convention on International Civil Aviation, which was signed in Chicago on 7 December 1944, includes several articles which call for adoption of international regulations in all fields where uniformity facilitates and improves air navigation.

These regulations, known as Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs), have been promulgated in Annexes to the Convention which are amended from time to time when necessary. Each Annex deals with a specific aspect of international civil aviation. Aspects relating to medical regulations for licence applicants are included mainly in Annex 1 — Personnel Licensing and to some degree in Annex 2 — Rules of the Air and Annex 6 — Operation of Aircraft. Issues involving preparedness planning for a communicable disease of public health concern are considered in Annex 6, Annex 9 — Facilitation, Annex 11 — Air Traffic Services and Annex 14 — Aerodromes. Part VI, Chapter 1 of this manual covers this topic.

Standards and Recommended Practices are defined as follows:

Standard. Any specification for physical characteristics, configuration, materiel, performance, personnel or procedure, the uniform application of which is recognized as necessary for the safety or regularity of international air navigation, and to which Contracting States will conform in accordance with the Convention. In the event that a State finds it impracticable to comply in all respects with any such international standard but allows a less stringent practice, immediate notification to ICAO is compulsory under Article 38 of the Convention.

In case a more stringent regulation is adopted, notification to ICAO is compulsory only when such regulation is applied also on foreign licence holders and aircraft. However, in a Resolution of 5 February 1999, the ICAO Council made it clear that, in principle, national requirements "more exacting" than the SARPs would be detrimental to the framework of the Chicago system within which international civil aviation has developed and continues to develop. In this Resolution the Council also called upon each Contracting State to utilize the multilateral mechanism of ICAO where it believes that changes to the content or level of implementation of the Standards and Recommended Practices in the Annexes to the Chicago Convention are necessary or desirable.