African Airlines Urged to Embrace International Safety Standards
Posted on: Friday, 18 November 2005, 09:00 CST
African airlines urged to embrace international safety standards
JOHANNESBURG, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- The African aviation industry contributing a quarter of the world's air accidents has been urged to embrace and pass a comprehensive safety audit run by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
Only three airlines in Africa -- South African Airways, Kenya Airways and Egyptair -- have completed the IATA Operational Safety Audit, a thorough check on the state of their equipment and safety procedures, it was disclosed on Thursday.
Giovanni Bisignani, IATA's director general and chief executive, said this week that he was worried and disappointed that out of 140 airlines, representing nearly 70 percent of the total world air traffic, that had successfully passed the audit, only three were in Africa, local newspaper The Star reported.
This emerged as European countries moved more coherently to ban unsafe airlines from operating in their territories.
It was reported that EU legislators on Wednesday approved a Europe-wide blacklist of unsafe airlines, which hopefully will be in place by early next year after gaining approvals from European governments.
Some European countries, such as France, Belgium, Britain and Switzerland, have introduced blacklists of banned airlines, including Mozambican national airline LAM, said the newspaper.
IATA had made it a priority to improve the safety standards of African airlines and reduce the number of fatal crashes on the continent, Bisignani was quoted as saying. He appealed to governments and airlines to work together with his association to achieve this.
Although Africa accounted for only 4.5 percent of global air traffic, 25 percent of all accidents in which aircraft were lost last year occurred in Africa, he said.
The latest air traffic tragedy of the continent occurred on October 22, when a Boeing 737-200 airliner of Nigeria's Bellview Airlines nosedived into the ground and disintegrated shortly after it took off from Lagos en route to the capital Abuja. All 111 passengers and six crew members were dead.
Admitting that it would be difficult for some cash-strapped African airlines to meet IATA audit standards, Bisignani said his association had launched a partnership for safety with a 3 million US dollar investment to identify the gaps between the IATA standards and current practices in some airlines.
Partnership for safety seminars have already been held in Nairobi, Johannesburg, Dakar and Lagos, and will be done in Libreville next month, he said.
Source: Xinhua News Agency - CEIS
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