FlightCom Magazine 30AFRAA requires its members to pass IATA’s IOSA - but he criticised
the blacklist which, he maintains, smears the entire continent’s
airlines. Flightglobal quotes Chingosho; “Many of these airlines
had no intention [of flying], or had no aircraft they could fly into
Europe. They had no plans to do so,” he said, noting that a blacklist
containing 100 African airlines gave passengers the perception that
even high-standard operators are unsafe. “Why not publish a list of
safe airlines?”
AFRAA criticised the blanket ban on Mozambican carriers,
including LAM Mozambique, and restrictions on Air Madagascar,
arguing that both carriers had passed IATA audits and had good
safety records.
Chingosho singled out France for
rebuke, suggesting it was instrumental in
shaping the blacklist and that Air France
benefited. Nine out of 10 of Air France’s
most profitable routes are African, he
claimed. Air France rejects this, stating:
“We always try to co-operate with local
carriers, to find a partner for domestic
flights. Knowing the growth rates, strong
African carriers would be beneficial to
us. It brings competition but at least it
also gets people flying regionally.”
And then there is the obvious
question - if a country’s entire aviation
infrastructure is deemed unsafe, no
airline should be allowed to operate
there, Chingosho added. “If a country
is unsafe, why would it be safe for
European airlines to fly into it?” he asks.
“It would carry more weight if they were
to say EU airlines are banned from flying
there because it is unsafe.”
Thus, when Mozambique was
added to the ‘blacklist’ in 2011 AFRAA
complained that the decision unfairly
penalises LAM Mozambique Airlines’,
which has an “impeccable” safety record.
“Since the company was established
in 1980; it has not had a single major
accident. And since 1989 there have
been no accidents of any kind involving
LAM Mozambique Airlines aircraft.
Major European airlines can make no
such claim.” (This was before the LAM
Flight 470 suicide crash in northern Namibia in 2013.)
AFRAA compared LAM to Air France, which, it claims, has had
23 major accidents since 1990, three of them with fatalities.
LAM Mozambique Airlines, the statement says, attained the
IATA Safety Audit Certification in 2007, which was renewed in
- “AfRAA fails to see how such blanket banning contributes
to encourage African carriers which strive to achieve industry best
practices in safety standards,” the statement continues. “The banning
of an airline not only prohibits the airline from operating to the EU,
but also impacts its ticket sales to other destinations, including on
code shared routes, as travel agents and other code share partners
in EU are required by regulation at the time of sales or booking
to notify passengers that the airline is blacklisted. While the net
losers are African carriers, the net beneficiaries are always the EU
Community carriers that swiftly step in to fill the vacuum and take
the market share of the banned airlines.”AN UNFAIR BLANKET BAN
IATA admitted that the list of airlines banned from the EU
included several that are safe, that and the EU failed to aid others
needing practical help. Tyler said the EU let European airlines serve
countries whose own carriers were banned not necessarily as a result
of the failings of non-EU carriers, but because of concerns over
regulation of airspace.The report quotes Tyler: “The airlines on the EU blacklist are on
it because the EU hasn’t adequate confidence in the safety oversight
provided by regulatory authorities, so the airline can be perfectly
safe but the EU decides the regulator isn’t doing its job. It smacks of
double standards and is the wrong approach. The right one is to get
in there and help resolve the deficiency in regulatory oversight. Let’s
go and assist the regulators to remedy that deficiency - putting their
airlines on a blacklist isn’t the right approach,” Tyler said.”
In conclusion, a Business Travel report quotes a spokesman for
the European Commission: “The safety performance of an airline
depends on several factors, not only on the airworthiness of aircraft:
for instance, pilot and crew training and fitness and airline safety
procedures,” he said.Wau South Sudan.A CemAir CRJ airliner grounded by the CAA - EASA
questions whether African regulators can be trusted.