Yemenia Faced EU Blacklisting After 2007 Plane Fault
June 30 (Bloomberg) -- Yemenia, the airline that had a fatal crash today in the Indian Ocean, faced possible blacklisting in Europe after France found fault in 2007 with the same Airbus A310 plane involved in the accident.
The Yemeni national carrier was subject to more frequent
inspections in Europe after the incident two years ago, according to French and European Union officials. The airline passed checks that could have led to a ban on the continent, European Transport Commissioner
Antonio Tajani told reporters today in Brussels.
Yemenia was on an EU watchlist because of safety concerns and had not flown A310s into France after a mid-2007 inspection of the plane that crashed, French Transportation Minister
Dominique Bussereau said. “This plane had been excluded from the national territory because it represented certain irregularities,” he told members of parliament.
The Yemenia aircraft with 153 people on board came down in the ocean just before it was due to land in the Comoros Islands after taking off from the Arab country’s capital, Sana’a. The cause of the accident hasn’t been determined, though the carrier’s chairman has said weather was to blame. A five-year- old child survived.
‘Strict Surveillance’
“This airline was under strict surveillance,” Bussereau said on France’s i-tele television channel. “It’s a plane that disappeared from French soil following the discovery of numerous faults.”
Bussereau didn’t specify what problems were identified when France’s civil aviation authority, the DGAC, found faults with the
aircraft.
EU rules require that any ban of planes be implemented across Europe, not just in an individual country. Bussereau didn’t spell out today whether the plane was banned only in France and his press office didn’t respond to six messages seeking comment.
European nations have acted in concert for three years in excluding any airlines or portions of fleets from flying in the region. Fatal crashes in 2004 and 2005 prompted the governments to develop a common blacklist procedure.
The list, updated at least four times a year, is based on deficiencies found during checks at European airports, the use of antiquated aircraft and shortcomings by non-EU airline regulators.
Inspections
Various planes operated by Yemenia underwent 24 inspections in different EU countries after France first identified the problem with the A310 in 2007, according to EU air safety regulators.
The airline wasn’t placed on the EU blacklist because the carrier passed inspections done in Europe after the initial concerns, Tajani said. “The controls were positive.”
The European Commission, the 27-nation EU’s regulatory arm, will ask Yemenia to make a safety presentation in coming days, the transport commissioner said. The next update of the blacklist is due in about two weeks.
“We never had problems with the plane,” Yemenia Chairman Abdulkalek
Saleh Al-Kadi said in a telephone interview. “It was purely weather.”
The plane wasn’t banned from flying in France, he said, and was last serviced May 2. The pilot was “well experienced, middle aged and has thousands of hours of flights,” he said.
Ali Sumairi, deputy managing director of Yemenia Airlines, told France24 television that the plane “was checked by French authorities with some findings, but they were minor findings that were corrected.”
‘Technically Sound’
Sumairi said the plane departed without any difficulty. “The aircraft was technically sound,” he said. Yemenia had flown an Airbus A330 plane from Paris to Sana’a via Marseilles, and then transferred passengers for Comoros onto the A310.
The EU blacklist, besides imposing a ban in Europe, can act as a guide for travelers worldwide and influence safety policies in non-EU countries. Nations that are home to carriers with poor safety records can ground them to avoid being put on the EU list, while countries keen to keep out unsafe airlines can use the European list as a guide for their own bans.
Yemen is the poorest Arab nation, with about 40 percent of the population living on less than $2 a day, according to the U.K. Department for International Development.
A310 Usage
The A310 is a medium- to long-range widebody plane that is a shorter variant of Airbus’s first model, the A300. More than 150 airlines operate A310s, according to Ascend, a London-based aviation database. The company ceased building A310s in July 2007 as the aircraft was supplanted by newer models.
This is the first fatal crash suffered by Yemenia, according to Ascend. A passenger was killed in June 2007 when a security guard allegedly opened fire while passengers were disembarking from a plane. The airline’s last total loss of an aircraft was in August 2001, when a Boeing 727 struck a concrete block after overrunning upon landing at Asmara, Eritrea.
Today’s crash is the ninth total loss and eighth fatal accident involving an A310 since the type entered service in April 1983, Ascend said, adding that 755 passengers and 74 crew members died in those accidents.
The Yemenia accident is the fifth fatal accident to passengers on paid commercial flights this year and the third involving a western-built jetliner, Ascend said. Toulouse, France-based Airbus is a unit of
European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co.
Yemenia Fleet
Yemenia leased four A310-300s, according to the Arab Air Carriers Organization. The plane that crashed was the oldest of the model in the carrier’s fleet, having been delivered in 1990. The newest A310 in the fleet was built in 1997. The airline, which is 49 percent owned by Saudi Arabian Airlines, also operates leased Airbus A330-200 and Boeing Co. 737-800 aircraft.
The plane was owned by International Lease Finance Corp., a unit of American International Group Inc., and had been on lease to Yemenia since 1999. Airbus said in an e-mailed statement that it is providing technical assistance to French investigators on the crash.
Most of the passengers were of Comorian origin from France, the airline said. Sixty-six French nationals were on the flight, the French Foreign Ministry said.
The Comoros Islands are an archipelago located off the southeastern coast of Africa, northwest of Madagascar. About 200,000 Comorians live in France, according to the French government.
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