C

1. New Prospect House, 8 Leake Street, London SE1 7NN
T 020 7902 6600 F 020 7902 6667 E enquiries@prospect.org.uk W www.prospect.org.uk
Dr Federico Alberto Cuello Camilo
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the UK
Embassy of the Dominican Republic
139 Inverness Terrace
Bayswater
London, W2 6JF
25 March 2015
Your Excellency
Air safety in the Dominican Republic
Prospect is a trade union representing 120,000 professional, technical and managerial
workers across public and private sectors in the UK – including air traffic controllers and
air traffic systems specialists. We are rightly proud of the level of service that our
members provide in some of the most congested and confined airspace in the world but,
even more so, of the level of safety that comes with this performance. For all of our
members, the safety of aircraft within our areas of responsibility is paramount.
For some time we, along with many other air traffic unions and associations across the
World, have become increasingly concerned with what appears to be a deteriorating
situation in the Dominican Republic, where employees engaged in the provision of air
traffic control (ATC) services have been under what can only be described as a sustained
attack from the Instituto Dominicano de Aviación Civil (IDAC). These attacks seem to be
a direct response to air traffic controllers trying to highlight serious failings in the ATC
system which include total communications failures, controllers being forced to co-
ordinate with each other by mobile phone, continued failures of navigational aids and
emergency communications equipment being utilised in circumstances for which it is not
designe. Across the globe, controllers are encouraged to report these circumstances in
order to protect flight safety yet, in the Dominican Republic, IDAC has responded by
victimising controllers reporting these problems - including demotion and suspension of
some individuals.
The Asociación Dominicana de Controladores de Tránsito Aéreo (ADCA) - which
represents ATC staff in the Dominican Republic - has done its utmost to try and engage
with IDAC to resolve these issues through social dialogue but has had no success. ADCA
is affiliated to the ITF (the International Transport Workers’ Federation) and has the full
support of the ITF Air Traffic Services Committee.
The ITF recently sent its Americas regional secretary, Antonio Fritz, to the Dominican
Republic on a fact-finding mission. Unfortunately the authorities arrested him shortly
before he was due to address a press conference about the potential threat to safety that

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the situation poses. We, along with our colleagues in ITF and The International
Federation of Air Traffic Controllers’ Associations (IFATCA), can only conclude that IDAC
has no interest in addressing the threats to flight safety and instead only intends to
silence ADCA to prevent it from making people aware of these threats.
We wish to bring this issue to your attention and to make you aware of the opinion of
ATC professionals in the UK that air safety in the Dominican Republic is comprised. We
urge you to inform your government that air safety in the Dominican Republic is under
scrutiny within the civil aviation community internationally. And we urge your
government to implement safety reporting procedures of the type in place in Europe and
elsewhere using the ‘Just Culture’ model.
I look forward to your response.
Yours sincerely,
Mike Clancy
General Secretary