Guyana tightens air safety rules for airports and navigation systems
Airports must set up runway safety teams, and the operators of radar and radio systems must prove they still work after every change.
Guyana's air safety regulator has issued two new sets of rules: one for airports, and one for the systems that guide planes through the sky.
Both come from the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA). They were published in the Official Gazette on 12 October as Requirements No. 10 and No. 11 of 2026.
The airport rules are the bigger change. Every certified airport must now set up a team whose job is to keep its runways safe. The team must bring together everyone who works on or near the runway. It has to spot danger early, such as a plane sliding off a runway or rolling onto one that is in use.
These are not far-off risks. In early April 2025, a Caribbean Airlines jet and a Roraima Airways plane ended up on the main runway at Cheddi Jagan International Airport at the same time. The GCAA suspended the pilots of both planes and the air traffic controllers on duty while it investigated, the Jamaica Observer reported.
Last month a Trans Guyana Airways Cessna Caravan ran off the runway at Mabaruma in Region One. No one was hurt, Kaieteur News reported. The GCAA sent investigators.
Airports must also run a full “safety management system”. In plain terms, this is a written plan for finding problems, judging how serious they are and fixing them. The plan must match the size of the airport, so a busy international airport needs more than a small airstrip.
Before they change anything, airports must check it for safety risks. That covers new equipment, new buildings, new staff and outside companies doing work for them. Each change must be checked before it happens and watched afterwards.
The second set of rules covers the radios, radar and navigation signals that pilots rely on. Whoever runs these systems must now set clear tests to show they still work properly after any change or upgrade. The rules also add “performance-based navigation”, which sets how accurate a plane's navigation must be on a route or landing approach and relies heavily on satellite signals.
The timing matters. More people are flying to Guyana than ever before. Cheddi Jagan handled 826,000 passengers in 2024, 17 per cent more than the year before, the airport's chief executive, Ramesh Ghir, said in January 2025.
Guyana also has ground to make up on safety. In a 2024 audit by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the United Nations' aviation agency, Guyana scored 66.36 per cent on meeting global safety standards, according to the GCAA.
The navigation rules were signed in July and the airport rules in August. Both update rules first set in 2024.