The blacklist of foreign air carriers is compiled on the basis of EU Regulation 2111/2005, which came into force in January 2006 and gave the European Commission the right to ban or restrict the activities of unsafe airlines on the territory of the Union. The first version of the list, published in March of this year, included 97 companies that were completely banned from appearing in EU airspace, and three more that had serious restrictions imposed on their operations. In the new version of the list, the number of 'fully banned' companies increased to 138, and those 'admitted with reservations' to four. As before, the vast majority of penalized companies come from Africa.
Before the announcement of the new version, information appeared that the Russian airline Pulkovo might be on it. EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot, meeting on September 8-9 with Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin, told his Russian counterpart that European authorities have very serious questions about the state of safety at Pulkovo. However, even then, experts considered it unlikely that the Europeans would go as far as actually banning Pulkovo from flying to EU countries. Among other things, this could prove counterproductive for Europeans if Russia in response restricted flights of EU airlines to St. Petersburg. All issues were resolved in a working manner. Neither Pulkovo nor any other Russian airline is on the EU blacklist.
The list was lengthened mainly due to Kyrgyzstan. In March, it included two Kyrgyz airlines; now 27 are listed. But flights to Europe are banned not only for them but for absolutely all air carriers registered by the Kyrgyz authorities. The European Commission does not comment on the reasons for the ban imposed on any particular airline or entire country. In the case of Kyrgyzstan, one can only assume that the reason was the collision of a Tu-154 and an American KC-135 tanker aircraft on the runway of Bishkek airport on September 26. The investigation into the incident is not yet complete. Therefore, it is too early to say who exactly is to blame for the incident: the pilots of one of the aircraft, both crews together, air traffic controllers, or someone else. It is only known for certain that the Tu-154 damaged in the collision was the only aircraft of its class in the republic, that it lost a two-meter piece of wing in the accident and will no longer be able to take off. Therefore, even if Kyrgyz civil aviation had not been officially banned from European skies, it currently has no means to get there. As for the Kyrgyz airlines listed by name in the blacklist, the vast majority of them had already stopped flying anywhere, having gone bankrupt.
The same can be said about many African entries on the list. In general, excluding African carriers and Kyrgyzstan, the definitely banned list includes one company each from North Korea, Afghanistan, and Suriname, as well as two from Kazakhstan (BGB Air and GST Aeroair, which de facto no longer exist). The rest were banned by the European Commission's experts on a country-by-country basis.
All airlines from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Swaziland are banned from flying to the EU. For each of these countries, a list of banned airlines is provided. However, those carriers that are not on it but have the misfortune of being registered in one of the 'banned countries' are banned anyway. In the March version of the blacklist, the same five African countries were subject to this punishment as now. Only now Kyrgyzstan has been added.