Background: Aerodrome certification compliance levels at civil aviation authorities in developing economies are frequently assessed against ICAO Standards and Recommended Practices benchmarks derived from the operational contexts and resource levels of developed economy aviation systems, producing compliance gap assessments that overstate the magnitude of regulatory reform required and understate the contextually appropriate compliance improvement priorities for authorities operating under significant institutional, financial, and technical resource constraints. A comparative benchmarking model that enables developing economy civil aviation authorities to assess their aerodrome certification compliance levels relative to peer authorities in comparable contexts would support more realistic performance target setting, more effective international technical assistance targeting, and more actionable national compliance improvement planning than universal benchmark comparisons against developed economy standards alone can provide
Methods: This paper proposes a Comparative Aerodrome Certification Compliance Benchmarking Model for developing economy civil aviation authorities, comprising a weighted compliance scoring methodology for converting aerodrome certification inspection outcomes into comparable performance indicators across ICAO Annex 14 requirement categories, a peer group classification system for identifying comparable authorities based on institutional and operational context variables, a gap analysis framework for identifying priority compliance improvement areas with the highest safety return on regulatory resource investment, and a progress tracking methodology for monitoring compliance trajectory over multi-year improvement program periods
Results: The benchmarking model provides a structured methodology for civilian aviation authorities across the ECOWAS, COMESA, and SADC regional civil aviation safety oversight organization systems to assess their aerodrome certification compliance performance against contextually comparable peer authorities, identifying specific compliance areas where regional leaders have developed effective approaches under comparable constraints that can be adapted for implementation at lower-performing authorities through structured technical assistance exchange
Conclusion: The Comparative Aerodrome Certification Compliance Benchmarking Model advances aerodrome safety oversight improvement methodology by enabling developing economy civil aviation authorities to learn from peer authority experience under comparable constraints rather than relying exclusively on top-down technical assistance from developed economy authorities whose regulatory environments and resource levels differ substantially from the contexts in which the benchmarking model findings will be applied