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FRANCE AND BELGIUM PUBLISH LIST OF AIR CARRIERS BANNED FROM THEIR TERRITORY
SOPHIE NICHOLSON
AP Worldstream; Aug 29, 2005
France and Belgium have issued blacklists of airlines prohibited from
using their airports, in an attempt to allay public fears about flying
after a recent series of deadly crashes.
The French list comprises six companies from the U.S. Virgin Islands,
Thailand, North Korea, Mozambique and Liberia. Belgium's list released
Monday includes nine airlines from Egypt, Armenia, Congo, Libya,
Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, Ukraine and the Central African Republic.
Swiss civil aviation officials said they planned to release a similar
list Thursday.
Proposals for a European blacklist were still working their way
through lawmaking institutions, prompting individual countries to
take action in the meantime.
Starting Sept. 8, different European Union member states will meet in
Brussels to work on harmonizing rules to ban or suspend a company's
flights, EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot said Monday.
Maxime Coffin, test director at the French civil aviation authority,
DGAC, said he hoped the French list would speed up Europe's
efforts. Though all the airlines had been banned in recent years,
France had never before made a blacklist public.
"We also hope this list will persuade foreign companies who want to
come to France to be more rigorous," Coffin told a news conference.
Thailand's Phuket Airways, one of the airlines banned in France,
demanded to know what criteria France used to judge it.
"I really don't understand what is the meaning of unsafe. Unsafe
for what? Unsafe for operations or unsafe for what? Because we have
never had a serious incident or accident, so I would like to ask back
to the authorities what is the meaning of unsafe?" Captain Chawanit
Chiamcharoenvut, executive vice president of Phuket Air, said at the
company office in Bangkok.
Safety specialists said, however, that because air accidents are
relatively rare, airline records failed to tell the whole story.
In France, many questioned the reliability of the blacklists.
"Publishing lists is completely ineffective," said Marc Chernet,
president of an association for victims of a Flash Airlines plane
crash in the Red Sea in June 2004. The plane, heading to Paris,
crashed after taking off from Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt, killing 148
people, mostly French tourists.
He suggested the French blacklist be replaced with a system of
"security grades" to rank airlines on their overall safety.
"A company that is unable to fly can easily make an agreement to fly
in another company's name," he told Europe-1 radio.
Other European countries have rejected national blacklists. The
Netherlands, for example, says such a move should be the result of
a joint effort by the 25 EU countries.
"France and Belgium have announced their decision to publish a
blacklist of unsafe airlines on the Internet. The Netherlands doesn't
support that," the Dutch Transport Ministry said in a statement
Monday. Instead, "it wants the European Commission to come up with
a list of airlines that would be banned from the EU air space."
The French and Belgian measures were announced after a series of five
aviation accidents in the past few months, including one involving a
Colombian-registered charter that crashed in Venezuela, killing 152
French citizens from the Caribbean island of Martinique.
On Saturday, a charter flight from Turkish company Fly Air was
grounded at Paris' Roissy airport with tire problems and a small fuel
leak. Passengers were either reimbursed or flown out on a different
plane Monday. That company was not on France's blacklist.
France's list of banned airlines is: Air Koryo of North Korea; Air
St. Thomas of the U.S. Virgin Islands; International Air Services of
Liberia; Thailand's Phuket Airlines; and Linhas Aereas de Mocambique
and Transairways, both from Mozambique.
On the Belgian list were Africa Lines of the Central African Republic;
Air Memphis from Egypt; Air Van Airlines of Armenia; Central Air
Express from Congo; Libya's ICTTPW; International Air Tours Limited
from Nigeria; Johnsons Air Limited of Ghana; Silverback Cargo
Freighters from Rwanda; and South Airlines of Ukraine.
The U.S. has a slightly different system that focuses on countries
rather than airlines, and uses aviation safety standards set by
the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations
agency headquartered in Montreal. Twenty-six of the 100 countries
that have been assessed do not meet ICAO standards, most in Africa,
South America and the Caribbean.
SOPHIE NICHOLSON
AP Worldstream; Aug 29, 2005
France and Belgium have issued blacklists of airlines prohibited from
using their airports, in an attempt to allay public fears about flying
after a recent series of deadly crashes.
The French list comprises six companies from the U.S. Virgin Islands,
Thailand, North Korea, Mozambique and Liberia. Belgium's list released
Monday includes nine airlines from Egypt, Armenia, Congo, Libya,
Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, Ukraine and the Central African Republic.
Swiss civil aviation officials said they planned to release a similar
list Thursday.
Proposals for a European blacklist were still working their way
through lawmaking institutions, prompting individual countries to
take action in the meantime.
Starting Sept. 8, different European Union member states will meet in
Brussels to work on harmonizing rules to ban or suspend a company's
flights, EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot said Monday.
Maxime Coffin, test director at the French civil aviation authority,
DGAC, said he hoped the French list would speed up Europe's
efforts. Though all the airlines had been banned in recent years,
France had never before made a blacklist public.
"We also hope this list will persuade foreign companies who want to
come to France to be more rigorous," Coffin told a news conference.
Thailand's Phuket Airways, one of the airlines banned in France,
demanded to know what criteria France used to judge it.
"I really don't understand what is the meaning of unsafe. Unsafe
for what? Unsafe for operations or unsafe for what? Because we have
never had a serious incident or accident, so I would like to ask back
to the authorities what is the meaning of unsafe?" Captain Chawanit
Chiamcharoenvut, executive vice president of Phuket Air, said at the
company office in Bangkok.
Safety specialists said, however, that because air accidents are
relatively rare, airline records failed to tell the whole story.
In France, many questioned the reliability of the blacklists.
"Publishing lists is completely ineffective," said Marc Chernet,
president of an association for victims of a Flash Airlines plane
crash in the Red Sea in June 2004. The plane, heading to Paris,
crashed after taking off from Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt, killing 148
people, mostly French tourists.
He suggested the French blacklist be replaced with a system of
"security grades" to rank airlines on their overall safety.
"A company that is unable to fly can easily make an agreement to fly
in another company's name," he told Europe-1 radio.
Other European countries have rejected national blacklists. The
Netherlands, for example, says such a move should be the result of
a joint effort by the 25 EU countries.
"France and Belgium have announced their decision to publish a
blacklist of unsafe airlines on the Internet. The Netherlands doesn't
support that," the Dutch Transport Ministry said in a statement
Monday. Instead, "it wants the European Commission to come up with
a list of airlines that would be banned from the EU air space."
The French and Belgian measures were announced after a series of five
aviation accidents in the past few months, including one involving a
Colombian-registered charter that crashed in Venezuela, killing 152
French citizens from the Caribbean island of Martinique.
On Saturday, a charter flight from Turkish company Fly Air was
grounded at Paris' Roissy airport with tire problems and a small fuel
leak. Passengers were either reimbursed or flown out on a different
plane Monday. That company was not on France's blacklist.
France's list of banned airlines is: Air Koryo of North Korea; Air
St. Thomas of the U.S. Virgin Islands; International Air Services of
Liberia; Thailand's Phuket Airlines; and Linhas Aereas de Mocambique
and Transairways, both from Mozambique.
On the Belgian list were Africa Lines of the Central African Republic;
Air Memphis from Egypt; Air Van Airlines of Armenia; Central Air
Express from Congo; Libya's ICTTPW; International Air Tours Limited
from Nigeria; Johnsons Air Limited of Ghana; Silverback Cargo
Freighters from Rwanda; and South Airlines of Ukraine.
The U.S. has a slightly different system that focuses on countries
rather than airlines, and uses aviation safety standards set by
the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations
agency headquartered in Montreal. Twenty-six of the 100 countries
that have been assessed do not meet ICAO standards, most in Africa,
South America and the Caribbean.