EU's ban on African 'flying coffins' raises safety concerns and questions

In announcing the ban on virtually all aircraft overseen by civil aviation authorities in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Equatorial Guinea, Swaziland and Congo from landing at European airports, EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot labeled many of the planes "flying coffins."

The recent ban and earlier similar orders will rankle many Africans for they point out that most of the banned airlines - like Thom's Airways from Congo - no longer operate and never fly to Europe anyway, while Africans have little choice but to use them to hop around the world's poorest continent.

Badara Allieu Tarrawallie, the deputy director of the civil aviation in Sierra Leone, which had 13 airlines banned, said his country had not had a safety audit by the main aviation-industry oversight group since the end of the country's brutal 1989-2002 civil war.

Still, "every state has sovereignty over its airspace," he said.

The aviation industry in most African nations suffer because of the same reasons: poverty, conflict and poor governance. And, little is being done to solve it.

According to Associated Press (AP), in Nigeria late last year, two planes flying domestic routes crashed within seven weeks of each other killing 224 people, including dozens of schoolchildren heading home for Christmas holidays. The causes of those crashes have not been determined, but Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has referred to an intelligence report detailing safety problems involving Nigerian airlines, including planes experiencing landing gear trouble.

In December, Obasanjo also blamed corruption for some of the troubles in his country's aviation industry and called in international experts for a safety review. Most other nations, though, are yet to move their feet.

In the wake of economic liberalization, many governments are trying to adapt and give in to privatization, to meet the demands of faster-than average passenger growth, but fail to strengthen regulatory mechanisms.

"You've got the general problem of poverty and lack of government capacity. We've gone far in one way, but not the other," AP quoted Princeton Lyman, a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, currently a Council on Foreign Affairs fellow, as saying.

One of the biggest problems faced by the airlines of most nations is their inability to buy new aircrafts and hence, their greater dependence on secondhand ones purchased from East European and former Soviet-bloc nations. These planes hardly pass the safety test and, over time, spare parts can be hard to obtain and some of the aging planes' maintenance documentation get lost.

Other airlines, particularly in vast Congo, who dislike shopping overseas, opt for refurbishing rickety old jets or propeller-driven planes, including some old military aircraft which are converted to passenger aircraft with cheap plastic chairs fixed in.

All this amid stories of presidents' wives commandeering entire sections of the now-defunct Air Afrique for shopping junkets in Paris, stranding paying passengers behind.

However, all hope is not lost. If the banned airlines hope to see European skies soon, they must develop and follow the lead set by others, like South African Airways, Kenya Airways and Ethiopian Airlines. Many African pilots who have honed their skills on the continent's cracked runways are known as skilled navigators of crisis zones.

Moreover, the EU’s ban is not irrevocable. According to the EU, airlines that have been banned have the right to appeal and express their point of view, which they should submit in writing and which is then added to their file for consideration, and can ask to be heard by the European Commission or attend a hearing in front of the EU's aviation safety committee.

The “black-list” is to be updated every three months, based on deficiencies found during checks at European airports and if airlines pass the inspections, they may be taken off the list.

SA Airlink, a franchise of South African Airways, is going to make one such appeal against the EU’s decision to blacklist its partner airline Swaziland Airlink, arguing that it falls under SA's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which it says is well-respected overseas.

Though, registered in Swaziland (the EU probably had concerns about the effectiveness of that country's safety regulatory body), Swaziland Airlink is managed by SA Airlink (which owns 40 percent stake), and uses only South African-registered aircraft and South African-licensed pilots.

Meanwhile, African Airlines Association (AFRAA) has accused the EU of tarnishing Africa’s image as the ban, besides damaging the African airlines business, paints a negative picture of all scheduled flights from the continent, including those adhering to world-class standards and safety operations.

The blacklisting sends the wrong message to the average European passenger "that all the African airlines are potentially dangerous and it is safer to travel with European airlines,” said AFRAA secretary-general, Christian Kossi, in a written statement. "This amounts to an act of misinformation and unfair competition that should be discredited."

Kossi also pointed out that no scheduled African airline member of IATA or AFRAA is included in the blacklist, insisting that none of the banned airlines flies in the European skies.

"This implies that the scheduled African airlines, especially those flying to Europe, comply with the same safety standards as their European competitors,” he said.

"At a time when the Third World markets are opening up to globalization, at the request of the developed world, these announcements may dangerously lead to a parochial attitude that will prompt European passengers to travel exclusively with European airlines," he said, adding that the EU should first indicate the list of the good African airlines which enjoy without reservation, regular licenses to operate to Europe "before listing in great numbers those that do not even exist."

The EU, through its ban, has indeed raised questions of safety of flying as well as many questions that it is best fit to asnwer.