ArmInfo. It is possible that the Civil Aviation Committee of Armenia will become a self-financing structure following the example of the real estate cadastre committee. On April 15, Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan stated this from the rostrum of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia.
According to him, all over the world, regulators issue paid licenses for flights, which allows them to carry out their activity on the principles of independence. In Armenia, this process is free, since it is generally accepted that the Committee is a state structure and is financed by the state. It is planned that the status of the Committee itself will change.
Nikol Pashinyan read an excerpt from the certificate of the Audit Chamber, according to which, as of October 10, 2018, of the 28 aircraft registered in Armenia, 18 were based outside the country, of which 10 were in Chad and South Sudan. Through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia, the Committee received notifications from the UN that Armenian aircraft in Africa are engaged in the illegal transport of weapons, which has received a scandalous continuation. The EU Commission, in turn, indicated weak control by the Armenian regulator over the activities of its airlines. However, as Nikol Pashinyan noted, the Committee has obligations to its companies, but does not have leverage to fulfill these obligations. In 2019, European regulators conducted research at one of the Armenian airlines, according to the results of which they submitted comments to the Committee. However, the official who worked with the Europeans did not inform the Committee management of the results of the audit, which the head of the Committee learned only two months later from the Europeans themselves. This official was fired, but managed to get a job in the same company in which the checks were carried out. In his respect, as well as in another case, criminal cases have been instituted. The Committee also carried out personnel changes.