Sint Maarten has been removed from the Federal Aviation Administration's list of countries with International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) certification, The Daily Herald has reported.
Minister of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Transport and Telecommunication Stuart Johnson said that the territory's Department of Civil Aviation was "diligently working" to take corrective measures by the end of 2019 and restore its IASA Category 1 rating.
The country was already downgraded from Category 1 to Category 2 after a 2011 audit which revealed deficiencies in Curacao, which shares parts of the civil aviation oversight with Sint Maarten.
When Sint Maarten was downgraded to Category 2, locally based airlines could no longer launch services to the United States or codeshare with American carriers. The country was removed from the listing due to the fact that there are currently no airlines based out of Sint Maarten which serve the United States.
According to the ch-aviation capacity module, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, Spirit Airlines, and United Airlines currently fly from the US to Sint Maarten.
The only scheduled airlines based out of Sint Maarten, Winair (WM, St. Maarten), exclusively operates regionally.
