By Bruno Waterfield - 14th November 2005
The EU will get new powers to inspect aircraft, ban unsafe airlines and licence pilots under measures tabled by the European Commission on Tuesday.
Brussels is pushing to extend the remit of the newly fledged European Air Safety Agency (EASA) and to fast-track EU blacklists.
New regulations to be agreed at the commission’s weekly meeting will boost the scope of the EASA and tighten controls on foreign airlines flying into Europe.
One key new power, to be introduced over the next three years, for the agency will be “pre-emptive action” to certificate non-EU aircraft.
The US, and soon China, already take preventative measures such as inspections to back up paper safety certificates from air carriers.
Most EU countries do not currently carry out runway or local country or origin inspections of foreign aircraft.
“Some do, some do not. Certification is mostly paper related and under bi-lateral agreements. It is usually based on the certificates made available,” said a commission official on Monday.
“The novelty of this proposal is that a real assessment of [air] companies will have to be done.”
Under the new regime, the EASA will coordinate data from national runway inspections and make its won “assessment of the safety situation in the country of origin”.
Within Europe, the agency, only created three years ago, will build on inter-governmental rules on airworthiness of aircraft to develop EU-wide “uniform” regulations.
Areas the EASA expects to intervene are ensuring cabin pressurisation checks before every flight, requiring functioning anti-collision radar and setting minimum fuel standards.
The EASA is also set to take over the “certification/approval of [national] training centres and assessment bodies for pilots”.
A second extension of the EASA’s powers, set for 2008 but to be proposed next year, will be supervision of air traffic management and airports.
Separate legislation allowing the EU to ban unsafe airlines across Europe’s 25 members states are expected to approved by MEPs this week.
The European Parliament has fast-tracked February commission proposals which national governments are expected to ratify on December 5.
A first EU blacklist is expected in March or April 2006 under new procedures creating an air safety committee under Brussels auspices.
The commission will have responsibility for drawing up the list but the addition, and bans, of airlines will be decided by a qualified majority of national experts.
Banned airlines will not be able to land or over-fly any of the EU 25 countries and all national authorities will be bound to uphold the prohibition.
National governments will still initiate bans – particularly in “exceptional circumstances” - but EU-wide exclusions must be ratified at the European level.
National authorities will still be able to institute domestic bans if a country has reason to exclude an airline cleared at the EU level.
The commission has insisted that new legislation has not been driven by knee-jerk responses to a series of air crashes this summer.
“Let us not make any connection between individual accidents and measures we are proposing,” said a commission official.
“These measures are not un-thought through measures taken under the pressure of accidents.”
“Accidents happen but do not make the correlation: accident then commission proposal.”
“It was just fate that accidents occurred in August.”
EU aviation is Europe’s safest form of travel with only 344 casualties for around eight million flights.
New regulations are prompted less by specific safety concerns that by forecasts that demand for air travel is expected to double by 2025.
Increases in volume will increase net totals of fatalities even if the EU’s good safety ratio was maintained.
The commission’s EASA proposals were first drafted in 2004 and tabled in June 2005, blacklist measures were unveiled February 2005.
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