FlightCom – August 2019

27 FlightCom Magazine

Briefing

text: Guy Leitch

T

HE European Community

(EU) ‘blacklisted’ a number of

African airlines from operating

within the UE due to safety

concerns over alleged poor

maintenance and regulatory oversight.

Improvement began. Gunther

Matschnigg, Senior Vice President, Safety,

Operations & Infrastructure, explained

that, “the total accident rate for Africa has

improved compared to last year, but at 7.98

accidents per millions flights, they are still

more than four times the global average.”

The global average airline accident

rate to end April 2013 stands at 1.73. IATA

member airlines, who are held to IOSA’s

stricter safety standards, currently have a

figure of 0.97.

To address the high African accident

rate, IATA and ICAO partnered with

various African aviation organisations, to

create a task force. The Task Force found

that the primary factors responsible for

accidents in Africa were:

• Lack of Safety Management
  System implementation


• Lack of effective regulatory
  oversight


• Lack of implementation of flight
  Data Analysis

As task force for the Africa Aviation

Safety Summit met in Johannesburg in May

2012. This derived an African Strategic
      Safety Improvement Action Plan for 2012-


2013. This Action Plan subsequently
      became part of the Abuja Declaration on
      Aviation Safety in Africa, endorsed by
      African Ministers responsible for transport,
      in Abuja in July 2012. The African Union
      Executive council endorsed the Abuja
      Declaration and associated Plan of Action
      during the 22nd Session in Addis Ababa
      in January 2013. But as Matschnigg said,
      “it’s a piece of paper, we need to make a
      commitment out of it.”
      This all led to the African Strategic
      Safety Improvement Plan 2012-2015,
      which aimed at tackling the poor safety
      performance of the continent. A key
      tool is to get African airlines to meet the
      IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA)
      requirements.
      Referring to the European Union’s
      banning of certain airlines in many African
      countries, airlines agreed to roll out a safety
      management system in accordance with the
      IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA).
      IOSA membership has had a dramatic
      improvement on airline safety. Tyler
      said that IATA’s 24 sub-Saharan IOSA
      compliant members are as safe as the global
      average and IOSA-registered carriers in
      Africa registered zero accidents in 2012 and
      in 2015.

In 2013 Tony Tyler, then IATA’s Director General and CEO, speaking at the IATA

AGM held in Cape Town said that safety is one of the issues preventing Africa from

reaching its full potential. The total accident rate for all jet airliners in Africa during

2012 was 10.85 accidents per million flight hours, compared to a world average of

2.00. in other words African airlines are more than five times as dangerous as the

world average – which includes some other fairly dangerous places.

AFRICAN AIRLINES

SAFETY

IS AFRICA STILL FIVE TIMES AS DANGEROUS?

Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771.