CAPTAIN Chester Voo Chee Soon, CEO of the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia (CAAM), is a man in a hurry.

2022 will mark three years since the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) downgraded the technical regulator for failing to meet the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) safety standards. The downgrade to Category 2 was a first for Malaysia’s aviation safety regulator since it was assigned a Category 1 rating in 2003 — placing it alongside countries such as Thailand, Bangladesh, Curaçao, Costa Rica and Ghana.

Voo says CAAM is making every effort to restore its aviation safety rating to Category 1. “We are currently working towards the recategorisation by FAA, which is a process that will take a few months. We should know by the second quarter of this year [if we are successful],” he tells The Edge in an interview.Read more