Excellent news for our #international travelers!
Macair has been awarded our Third Country Operator (TCO) authorization!
This authorization is the culmination of a 2 year project with the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) to permit Macair Inc., a third-country (non-EU) operator, to perform commercial air transport operations into the 28 Member States of the European Union, the 4 EFTA States (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland), and the territories managed by Regulation (EC) No 216/2008: Gibraltar, Åland Islands, Azores, Madeira, Canary Islands, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Réunion, Saint-Martin, and Mayotte.
So, who is EASA and why does this matter anyway?
EASA is the European Union Authority for aviation safety. Its main activities include the strategy and safety management, the certification of aviation products and the oversight of approved organisations and EU Member States. EASA enjoys technical, financial and legal autonomy to ensure the highest common level of safety protection for EU citizens within the EU and worldwide, to ensure the highest common level of environmental protection, to avoid duplication in the regulatory and certification processes among Member States and to facilitate the creation of an internal EU aviation market.
EASA also plays a leading role within the EU External Aviation Policy: the Agency is a strong counterpart of other Aviation Authorities outside the EU (e.g. USA, Canada, Brazil) and a major contributor to the export of the EU aviation standards worldwide.
PART-TCO is EASA’s answer for foreign air operators to operate in EASA’s 32 Member States. Europe centralizes the process to authorize third-country (non-EU) operators performing commercial air transport operations into the EU, thereby replacing various schemes of the 32 EASA Member States currently in place. Instead, a single safety authorization will be issued centrally by EASA under the new Implementing Rule (Part-TCO).
Foreign airlines’ surveillance is an ICAO Standard and already implemented for many years in several other countries, like the US, Canada, Australia, China and several EU member states.
