Incident Report
Subject: World's Airlines Criticised Date of Email reporting Incident: Mon 28/05/2007 Report Detail: IN THESE days of internet travel sites and online booking engines, buying yourself a cheap ticket on an international domestic airline has never been easier. But buyer beware, not all airlines have the same safety standards - or safety records. "Any airline that flies into Australia must comply with minimum international standards," said CASA spokesman Peter Gibson. "If a new airline applies to fly into Australia we will go to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to make sure it has passed the latest safety audits." But how can you be so sure about airlines operating in other countries? If you are flying domestically on an African airline, for instance, you are nine times more likely to have a fatal accident than if you are flying with a North American carrier, while Asian and Latin American carriers are roughly six times deadlier than American airlines. The ICAO publishes safety oversight audits on its website at http://www.icao.int but they really only give an overview of the country's aviation safety regulations, not individual airlines. Gibson conceded that finding safety information about international airlines was not easy. The International Air Transport Association (IATA), a US industry group, publishes a list of airlines that have passed its extensive safety audit. At the current time the list is not complete - the final deadline is the end of next year - and it does not detail those that have failed. "The European Union now has a coherent approach to banning airlines," said Jacques Barrot, vice-president of the commission responsible for transport, when the list was first published in March last year. The commission says that the bans and operational restrictions are based on the results of checks carried out in European airports; the use of poorly maintained, antiquated or obsolete aircraft; the inability of the airlines to rectify shortcomings identified during inspections; and the inability of the authority responsible for seeing that an airline performs its tasks properly. The list is quite specific, with some airlines banned from flying some planes into the region but allowed to fly others. For example, Pakistan International Airlines, known as PIA, is allowed to fly its Boeing 777s to Europe, but nothing else. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) issues periodic travel bulletins on the website http://www.smartraveller.gov.au that refer to airline safety, such as the March 27 release on the safety of Indonesian commercial airlines following the recent Garuda 737 crash in Yogyakarta, which advised that none of the 21 commercial airlines, including Garuda, had met the category one requirements of the civil aviation safety regulations. Beyond that, it's a case of doing your homework before you go. CASA has a link on its website to a database provided by the US Federal Aviation Administration that covers international and US airlines and has the accident records of almost all airlines, including details of each incident. It's not a particularly easy database to use, but you can search by airline name to find out just how many crashes, and near misses, an airline has had. Websites such as http://www.airsafe.com and http://www.airdisaster.com also have copious statistics on airline crashes and mishaps and are easier to use, but be warned, the relish with which they show images of crashes and disasters borders on the macabre. SAFETY CHECK World's safest airlines * Qantas World's unsafest airlines
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