The EU authorities were prompted to compile a pan-European blacklist of airlines by the plane crashes that occurred in 2005 in Greece and Colombia with numerous casualties. In January 2006, EU Regulation 2111/2005 came into force, giving the European Commission the right to ban or restrict the activities of unsafe airlines within the Union.
To begin with, the Commission banned flights of 97 companies and restricted three. The list published last week opens with North Korean Air Koryo. The Asian continent is also represented in the list by the national Afghan airline Ariana and Thai Phuket Airlines. Among CIS countries, two republics (also Asian) made it to the list: Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Two small companies from each have been banned.
However, the lion's share of those banned from the European skies are African carriers. The European Commission has banned absolutely all airlines registered by the authorities of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC – former Zaire), Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Swaziland, and Sierra Leone from flying to Europe. 83 companies from these five countries are also banned "by name." However, the compilers of the list do not vouch for the actual existence of all the listed "violators." "Every effort has been made to accurately identify all companies included in the EU list," says the explanatory note to the document. "Nevertheless, absolutely accurate verification of all cases proved impossible due to the complete lack of information concerning some airlines that may operate on the verge of internationally recognized aviation standards or completely outside them. Consequently, it cannot be ruled out that there are bona fide companies operating under the same trade name as any of the companies included in the list."
List "A" (which includes companies subject to a complete ban on flying to Europe) also includes one company each from two more African countries – the Comoros and Rwanda. A much shorter list "B" consists of only three companies whose individual aircraft have been declared "non-admissible" by European authorities. These restrictions have been applied to Bangladesh's Air Bangladesh, Libya's Buraq Air, and Congo's HBA. The latter turned out to be the only exception to the ban imposed by the European Commission on the aviation of the DRC. Moreover, only one aircraft from this company's entire fleet is admitted to Europe.
The publication of the blacklist is described in the accompanying note as "only the first step in the right direction." The European Commission promised to continue monitoring airlines and national aviation administrations of various countries in order to guarantee their commitment to international flight safety standards. The blacklist will be updated as necessary.