Concern, as African airlines dominate new EU blacklist

WORRIED by aviation safety in Africa, the European Union has continued to expand its list of African airlines that are not permitted to operate into its airspace.

The new list has 284 airlines from 24 countries worldwide currently barred from flying into Europe. Out of the 24 countries worldwide with airlines on the banned list, 17 of them or over 70 per cent are from Africa. This means that about a third of all African countries are on the banned list.

The new list which was published in April this year was the subject of debate at the on-going International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) African Ministerial Meeting on Aviation Safety taking place in Abuja.

The first version of the EU blacklist was published in 2006, on the legal basis of the Regulation NO. 474/2006 of the European Commission, issued on March 22 of that year. This current version of the list was drawn on April 3, 2012. The list has been regularly updated since then; more countries are being added to the list.

Experts are curious that currently, no African country had ever been removed from the list even as they insisted that there had been general improvement of aviation safety on the continent, adding that a number of countries on the list had rectified several safety deficiencies identified through ICAO audits.