At the opening of a regional aviation conference in Majuro Monday, Marshall Islands Transportation Minister Kenneth Kedi thanked the FAA for the more than $40 million it has injected into airport paving, fire safety facilities and other projects at Majuro’s Amata Kabua International Airport over the past three years.
The FAA is funding similar projects in Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia.
“Without the FAA’s Airport Improvement Program, the Marshall Islands would have difficulty implementing safety upgrades,” Kedi said.
Los Angeles-based FAA Western Pacific airports manager Mark McClardy said he was “impressed not just with the quality and dedication of people (in the aviation sector), but evidence that programs (in the islands) are becoming more sustainable. We have a good partnership in the Pacific. I wish it was the same in the United States.”
Federated States of Micronesia Secretary of Transportation Francis Itimai and Palau Minister of Commerce and Trade Jackson Ngiraingas expressed satisfaction for the funding and technical support received from the FAA to upgrade their airports and train safety personnel.
All three island nations have Compacts of Free Association with Washington providing up to 60 percent of their national budgets and making them eligible for numerous U.S. federally funded programs such as the FAA.
Ngiraingas warned the nearly 100 attendees that “the U.S. is not going to continue to provide everything for us” and island officials “need to remove complacency to ensure that when the FAA leaves, these programs will continue in a sustainable way.”
The 2009 Pacific Aviation Directors Workshop is focusing on “aviation safety and sustainability in the Pacific.”
The three-day meeting has brought officials from the FSM, Palau and Marshall Islands together with top FAA representatives, as well as officials representing aircraft industry, and fire fighter training and military programs from the Northern Marianas and Guam.
McClardy emphasized the economic importance of properly functioning airports.
“Show me a strong country, and I’ll show you a strong aviation operation,” he said. “It’s an economic generator. You do business anywhere in the world you have to have an airport and it has to be safe.”
