France, Belgium Ban a List of Air Carriers
By SOPHIE NICHOLSON, AP
Updated: 04:39 PM EDT
08/29/05
PARIS (Aug. 29) – France and Belgium have issued blacklists of
airlines prohibited from using their airports, an attempt to allay
public fears about flying after a recent series of deadly crashes.
The French list released late Sunday 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 also said they plan to release a
similar list Thursday.
Proposals for a European blacklist are still being prepared, prompting
individual countries to take action in the meantime.
Starting Sept. 8, EU states will meet in Brussels to work on
harmonizing rules to ban or suspend a company’s flights, EU Transport
Commissioner Jacques Barrot said.
Maxime Coffin, test director at the French civil aviation authority,
said he hoped the 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?” Capt. Chawanit
Chiamcharoenvut, executive vice president of Phuket Air, said in
Bangkok.
Because air accidents are still so rare – despite this month’s spike –
airline records fail to tell the whole story, safety specialists say.
In France, many questioned the reliability 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.
The French and Belgian measures were announced following 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. That
company was not on France’s blacklist.
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.
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.
Associated Press Writer Pierre-Yves Roger in Paris contributed to
this report.