EU: Commission updates its aviation blacklist for the first time

The European Commission today issued the first quarterly update of the list of airlines banned in the European Union drawn up in March this year[1]. The new list replaces the previous one and is now available on the Commission’s website.

In updating the list, as it is required to do on a regular basis, the Commission again consulted all airlines and national civil aviation authorities that might be affected. The Commission was assisted by the Aviation Safety Committee of Member State experts, which unanimously approved the list.

The main changes made to the initial list adopted on 22 March of this year (Commission Regulation (EC) No 474/2006) are:

* three companies have been added because of national measures notified by the Member States: Blue Wing, based in Surinam (notified by France), and Sky Gate International (licensed in Kyrgyzstan and notified by the UK) are now subject to a total ban (listed in Annex A) and Air West, based in Sudan (notified by Germany), is subject to operating restrictions (listed in Annex B);
* one company, Star Jet, based in Kyrgyzstan, has been banned on the initiative of the Commission. It was found to be the same company as Star Air, licensed in Sierra Leone and already banned within the European Union;
* the lists of companies licensed in the five countries now subject to a total ban have been updated on the basis of the latest register published by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (13 more for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 26 for Equatorial Guinea, 19 for Liberia, 13 for Sierra Leone and 10 for Swaziland);
* one company, Buraq Air, based in Libya, previously subject to operational restrictions on its cargo activities (and therefore listed in Annex B) has been withdrawn from the list, as it no longer carries out this type of activity;
* a European inspection visit established that companies based in Mauritania need not be subject to a ban on operations. Finally, not all the conditions for lifting the ban on GST Aero, based in Kazakhstan, have been fulfilled.

As well as imposing bans on airlines and providing useful information to passengers wishing to travel outside Europe, the list has proved to be an effective incentive, with a number of countries and companies that had taken either no action or only inadequate action in response to national bans agreeing to cooperate with the Commission in correcting the security problems identified.

The Commission has succeeded in making additional resources available to increase the technical assistance provided to countries whose levels of safety are judged to be inadequate (for the Democratic Republic of the Congo for example). Other international donors, in particular the World Bank, have announced similar measures.

Several European aviation bodies have launched initiatives in support of the system introduced by the Commission: the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) has proposed extending it to all European countries outside the Union. Eurocontrol, the air traffic control agency, has established a warning system that allows the immediate detection of flight plans registered for companies subject to a ban.

Outside Europe, the United Nations aviation agency, ICAO, has taken up the idea of a blacklist and is now publishing a list of countries that refuse to cooperate fully in safety audits. IATA, the international association of the main airlines, has announced its intention of cooperating with the Commission, in particular by informing it of the findings of its own checks. Several non-member countries have also proposed exchanging information on aviation safety with the Commission.

European Union