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EU Commission to blacklist unsafe airlines
(AP)
Updated: 2006-03-22 16:29
BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Union on Wednesday is expected to
publish its first blacklist of airlines that fail to meet international safety
standards.
The list was endorsed by national aviation experts last week,
but was still being amended up to its publication, officials said.
The
EU executive was to finalize the list at its weekly meeting. Officials declined
to name airlines on the list ahead of its formal adoption, but it is expected to
include several of the mostly Asian and African airlines that were banned by
some EU nations last year after a spate of crashes heightened safety concerns.
EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot was asked by EU governments to
draft an EU-wide blacklist plan to close loopholes allowing carriers deemed
unsafe in one EU member state to operate in another EU country.
Up to
Wednesday, European governments used different criteria to ban unsafe airlines,
meaning that planes banned in one country can still land in neighboring EU
states. Those lists will now be streamlined into one common EU file which will
apply across the 25 EU member nations.
The EU list, compiled from
national data by the Commission, would also cover aircraft chartered from
companies in non-EU countries. It will be published on the Internet and brought
to the attention of customers by travel agents, both at ticket sales offices and
on their Web sites.
Tour operators will have an obligation to inform
passengers on the identity of the carrier.
Under the new rules,
passengers will also have a right to compensation if the airline on which they
were to fly was included on the blacklist or replaced by a blacklisted airline
after they bought the ticket.
The Commission said it would review the
list every three months with the EU's aviation safety agency, either adding new
airlines or taking off carriers that meet EU safety standards.
The issue
gained urgency following two deadly airplane crashes last summer - in Greece and
Italy.
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