RESTRICTED
INLER RADIONAL AVIATION AND TOURISM DIVISION 1
DEPARTMENT OF TRADE
1 VICTORIA STREET
LONDON SW1H DET
Motions fro
110
Telephone Direct Line
Switchboard
01.215 01-215 7877
5123 ·
D Tonkin Esq CMG Ambassador
British Embassy
Hanoi
Vietnam
Dear Tonkin,
HKK 184/2
INDEX
FA
-
Af27/10
HO CHI MINH FLIGHT INFORMATION REGION
Our ref ED 19/9
4 October 1982
1) cc MRGD
ес
A4/31/10
Jack Groves, Director of Operational Services Overseas for the UK Civil Aviation Authority, will be leading the UK delegation, which includes Hong Kong representatives, at the ICAO Regional Air Navigation Conference in Singapore next January. The CAA take advice from the Department of Trade on the international aspects of civil aviation, and it therefore falls to me to reply to your letter of 26 July to Robin McLaren in Hong Kong about the Vietnamese interest in resuming responsibility for the Ho Chi Minh FIR.
2
Their objective is no doubt to achieve a consensus at the RAN Conference in January in favour of their proposals. Recommendations to this effect would then form part of the report from the Conference to ICAO, and implementation would follow in due course once ICAO was satisfied that the arrangements being made by the Vietnamese were adequate to discharge the responsibilities they were proposing to take on. These aspects of international civil aviation are predominantly technical in character, although of course political undercurrents can sometimes be detected beneath the technical arguments.
3 In the present case, as I understand it, there are no overriding objections to the Vietnamese proposal in principle, provided that they really can satisfy ICAO that they would be
There able to discharge their responsibilities effectively. is some concern, as you reported, that the Vietnamese may seek to increase charges for the use of their FIR, but the routes they are proposing would reduce distances and hence costs for the airlines overflying the region, so that a moderate increase in charges would probably be tolerable. Charges are supposed to be cost related, so that there is some opportunity for ICAO members collectively to bring pressure to bear on anyone who gets too far out of line.