Aviation officials are reluctant to renew certificate due to multiple concerns.

The interim certificate issued six months ago by the Department of Civilian Aviation (DCA) in response to the former government's rush to open the airport for domestic flights on July 29, will expire tomorrow and officials feel uneasy about extending it.

DCA director-general Chaisak Angsuwan said the lack of certification was likely to affect international confidence in Thailand's brand new airport, but it was impossible for his agency to issue a permanent certificate amid looming problems such as major cracks on the runway, taxiway and tarmac.

"The best we could do is issue another six-month interim certificate to Suvarnabhumi, but I'm not certain if we can do it by this Friday because there are a long list of questions for which we are still awaiting answers from the Airports of Thailand," he said.

Chaisak said his agency needed to see a comprehensive plan of how the cracks - reportedly scattered around some 100,000 square metres of the airport - would be addressed, as well as other unresolved safety issues such as inadequate lighting and airfield signs.

The Thaksin Shinawatra government rushed to officially open Suvarnabhumi in late September amid criticism from both local and international aviation industry that the airport was not ready. The Council for National Security, which ousted Thaksin 10 days before the opening, said it was too late to change the schedule.

These developments potentially set the stage for the airport to be left in a certification "no-man's land" as Thai credibility in regard to ensuring airport safety up to ICAO standards has suffered a major blow.

"The ICAO will soon release a list of uncertified airports in the world and it remains to be seen if Suvarnabhumi will be on the list," a DCA safety official, who asked not to be named, said.

Runway and tarmac cracks, which began appearing at the time of the official opening, seemed to be getting worse, said the safety official, and that made it impossible to certify that Suvarnabhumi met ICAO standards.

One of the key factors that has officials worried is the lack of confidence they have in numbers provided by AOT for certification of the runways' surface strength, known as the pavement classification number (PCN).

As was revealed by The Nation in July, DCA officials were frustrated that their efforts to obtain the data, and analysis that support the reported figure, have failed.

The safety official said the DCA's handling of certification for the new airport would also be a gauge for the state agency's own credibility. Last year the DCA was chosen as one of the first four agencies under an ICAO global campaign initiated in 2003 to evaluate member governments' capacity to conduct airport certifications consistent with ICAO guidelines. The other countries were Canada, Germany and Malaysia.

"The AOT reputation is going down the drain from the way it manages Suvarnabhumi, [and] I don't want to see DCA going down with it. Otherwise, what will be left of Thailand's aviation reputation?" the official said.

However, Suvarnabhumi Airport director Somchai Sawasdeepon said the aerodrome certification was not a legal binding issue and the airport could continue to operate without it.

"But the certification is an ICAO requirement and we would like to comply with it, that's why we applied to the DCA to issue us one," he said.

"We have addressed the concerns raised by DCA and will submit our answers tomorrow or the next day. An interim certificate is fine because there are many other airports in the world that have also still not been certified."

Nantiya Tangwisutijit

The Nation