EU Blacklists Unsafe Flights

5.52.07pm UTC (GMT +0000) Wed 16th Nov 2005

South East flyers are to get more travel information with the introduction of an EU 'blacklist' of airlines that do not meet safety requirements.

Following a number of fatal crashes this summer, MEPs voted today (Wednesday 16 November) to create a list of airlines that are considered too unsafe to fly within the EU.

If agreed by EU transport ministers in December, the new rules will enter into force at the start of next year.

Britain, France and Belgium have already published lists of grounded couriers due to poor safety records, but an airline banned in one EU country can still land in another without such restrictions.

South East Liberal Democrat MEP Sharon Bowles has welcomed the proposals.

She said: "It makes sense to spread best practice in safety across the whole of the EU. While UK citizens are protected when flying in and out of the country, they are not guaranteed the same levels of safety in other EU countries."

Under the plan passengers will have the right to compensation or re-routing if the airline that they were to fly with is included on the blacklist, or replaced by a blacklisted airline, after they had purchased the ticket.

Britain has blacklisted airlines from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Swaziland and Tajikistan.

The new powers also include the regulation of flight schools to ensure pilots have the same level of training throughout the EU.

Notes to editors

Common criteria for blacklisting will be introduced and an EU-wide list will be compiled and published by the European Commission.

The pressure for this blacklist started when a 737 owned by the Egyptian airline Flash crashed in January 2004 killing all the passengers on board; all of them French citizens. It emerged after this accident that the airline had been banned from Swiss airports on technical grounds two years earlier. And in May this year, it was discovered that Onur Air, a Turkish carrier, banned from Dutch airspace, was flying Dutch tourists to and from Belgian airports and bussing them over the border.

Additional incidents occurred during the summer involving EU operators and/or EU citizens, most notably the Helios Airways flight from Cyprus to Prague with 121 people on board which crashed north of Athens, apparently after a drop in cabin pressure.

ENDS