Crash sparks call for blacklist of planes

The setting up of a new global blacklist of planes unfit to fly will be discussed this week at a meeting between Antonio Tajani, the European Transport Commissioner, and Robert Kobeh Gonzalez, president of the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

The meeting follows the crash of the Yemenia airlines airbus off the Comoros Islands last week, when 152 passengers and crew died - the sole survivor was a girl of 12 .

Advocates of a global blacklist believe it would prevent carriers in the developing world from using their best aircraft to enter better regulated airspace and then moving passengers to older, less reliable aircraft, as is alleged to have occurred after the Yemenia flight from Marseille to Sanaa. The passengers were transferred on to the plane that crashed on the final leg from Sanaa to Grand Comoros.

Representatives of SOS Voyage aux Comores, a group created a year ago to lobby for better safety on Yemenia routes, said European and United States aviation authorities had not been sufficiently concerned about the safety practices of airlines operating outside European or American air space. In Africa there is one accident for about every 250,000 flights, five times the global average.

The crash sparked sometimes violent protests by Comorans against what they said was a history of dangerous safety lapses. The French Government has been forced to fend off accusations that it has not done as much for victims of the Yemenia crash as it did for those who died in the Air France crash last month.

Both Dominique Bussereau, France's Secretary of State for Transportation, and Tajani have called for a new blacklist to address the problem.

The European Union runs its own blacklist, as does the US. The EU list includes scores of airlines, and outlaws countries such as Indonesia and several African nations, whose carriers are prohibited from entering European skies.

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