American Airlines Successfully Passes Its Polar Certification Exercise.

One of the US FAA OPS Specs requirements to allow airlines to operate commercial flights on Polar routes, (north of 78) is to perform an emergency diversion exercise into a Russian airport. This exercise is performed with FAA participation, having inspectors on-site at the Russian airport and at the airline crisis center.

American Airlines performed such an exercise on February 21, 2006. Mr. Edgar Vaynshteyn, President of Global Aviation Consulting also participated in this exercise and was present at AAL headquarters. Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky airport was chosen by FAA as a diversion airport on the day of the exercise. FAA inspector at Petropavlovsk observed the airport emergency drill and their ability to handle the emergency diversion. Global Aviation ground handling representative at Petropavlovsk was interacting with both FAA and AMR and was very instrumental in the success of this exercise. As a result, AMR received conditional certification (pending the demonstration flight) to operate within Polar region.