| France to publish blacklist of airlines France next Monday will publish a list of airlines whose aircraft are prohibited from entering the country's airspace due to non-compliance with flight safety standards. The blacklist will appear on the website of the French Ministry of Transport. This was announced yesterday by the head of the department, Dominique Perben. The minister also said that by the end of the year, rules will come into force in the country according to which “tour operators and charter companies will be required to inform passengers who is operating the flight when purchasing a ticket.” The French Ministry of Transport promises to ensure that the same measures are taken by all member countries of the European Union on a collective basis. The department sees its strategic task as “strengthening the driving role of France in European aviation security organizations.”
Mr. Perben's speech is a reaction to the crash of a Colombian West Caribbean Airways plane that crashed on August 16 in the town of La Cucharita in Venezuela. The tragedy claimed the lives of 160 people on board. All of them, with the exception of the crew members, were French citizens and were heading home from Panama to the overseas department of Martinique.
The idea of a pan-European blacklist of foreign airlines was first floated by France after another disaster in which its citizens died. On January 3, 2004, a plane from local airline Flash Airlines crashed into the sea while taking off from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Most of the 148 dead were French tourists. During the proceedings, it turned out that two years earlier Switzerland had banned this company’s access to its airspace due to safety violations found on a Flash Airlines plane (though not on the one that later crashed in the Red Sea, but on another - just the company had two aircraft).
The now generally accepted practice in the world of commercial aviation recognizes the flight ban as practically a “private matter” of the relevant airlines and aviation administrations. There is no systematic exchange of such information between aviation authorities of different countries. Moreover, such facts are usually not reported to the general public.
French aviation authorities believed that if information about Flash Airlines' past problems in Switzerland had been publicly available, the deceased tourists would have had a reason to choose another carrier to fly. So that the lesson would not be in vain, they proposed creating and publishing a pan-European blacklist. True, after a year and a half, the idea was not implemented at the EU level, and now France has decided to take the first step alone. As far as we know, there are no Russian airlines on the list being prepared for publication.
French President Jacques Chirac last night supported the decision to tighten controls over the aircraft of foreign airlines, as well as the intention to make changes to the country's aviation security legislation. In particular, the President mentioned the need to increase and tighten control over airliners on French territory, publish a list of airlines whose operations are prohibited in France, as well as introduce a “blue label” system for those airlines that would voluntarily adopt certain safety standards. Mikhail KUKUSHKIN |
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