On November 6, Suriname’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASAS) announced a temporary pause on issuing new civil aviation certifications and selected supplementary operational approvals, as part of a sweeping corrective program to address long-documented gaps in the country’s national aviation regulatory regime. The reform roadmap was formally shared with domestic aviation sector stakeholders during a recent stakeholder convening, held in tandem with a visiting delegation from the Regional Safety Oversight Cooperation System (SRVSOP), a regional bloc that provides targeted technical assistance to member states working to elevate their aviation safety governance standards.
Suriname is in the process of formalizing its membership in SRVSOP, a move designed to unlock sustained technical support for the ongoing sector-wide overhaul. CASAS officials noted that the current national civil aviation regulatory framework has critical unaddressed gaps that require systematic, structural upgrades to meet global aviation safety benchmarks. A core component of the multi-phase recovery plan is a full revision of Suriname’s existing Civil Aviation Regulations (CARs), which will be built on the standardized Latin American Aeronautical Regulations (LARs) framework. The LAR system includes not just harmonized safety rules, but also comprehensive operational handbooks, implementation guidelines, standardized training curricula and other tools to enable consistent, rigorous oversight across the sector. CASAS confirmed that parallel updates to national underlying aviation legislation are already underway to align domestic law with the new regulatory standards.
To strengthen on-the-ground inspection capacity, CASAS is actively recruiting additional technical and specialized inspection staff, while long-term embedded SRVSOP experts will be stationed at the authority to provide hands-on mentorship and knowledge transfer to local teams. This support will not be limited to the regulator itself: domestic airlines and other aviation industry entities will also receive targeted guidance to help them implement and comply with the upcoming new safety rules.
Concurrent to these domestic reforms, CASAS is executing a targeted action plan to resolve the safety shortcomings that previously led all Suriname-registered air carriers to be added to the European Union’s Air Safety List, which restricts affected airlines from operating services into EU airspace. The authority received specialized technical support from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) to draft its corrective and preventive action plan, which has now received full formal approval from EASA. CASAS emphasized that the plan’s approval does not immediately lift the EU operational restrictions on Suriname’s carriers: full removal from the safety list will only be considered once the complete overhaul of national oversight systems and all required corrective actions have been fully verified as compliant with international standards, with regular progress assessments scheduled to track implementation.
CASAS also clarified that the responsibility for closing safety gaps is not exclusive to the national regulator: domestic airlines, ground handling providers, and other aviation sector stakeholders are required to develop and execute their own internal corrective action plans to resolve operational vulnerabilities within their own organizations. CASAS will conduct regular compliance audits to verify that all industry players are adhering to the updated safety protocols as the rollout progresses.
The authority noted that successful execution of the multi-year reform program depends on securing sufficient specialized technical personnel, targeted expertise, and dedicated budget allocations, adding that the national government has been fully briefed on the reform roadmap and has pledged formal support for the initiative. The phased recovery trajectory is expected to span an extended period, and no firm timeline has been released for lifting the temporary suspension on new certification issuances, as the authority prioritizes full, sustainable compliance over arbitrary deadlines.
CASAS schort nieuwe luchtvaartcertificeringen op wegens tekortkomingen in toezicht
