IATA questions Middle East safety record

Bisignani says Middle East airlines need to focus on their safety records

The Middle East’s “accident rate is six times worse than the global average”, said International Air Transport Association (IATA) director general Giovanni Bisignani.

During the Arab Air Carriers Organisation annual general meeting, currently taking place in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Bisignani said that Middle Eastern airlines need to focus on their safety record, according to reports from eTravel Blackboard.

The report noted that this assessment included many of the smaller airlines in the region, including the Yemen Airways crash off the Comoros islands and the Caspian Airlines flight in Iran in July.

The Yemen Airways crash, which came from a fleet based in one of the poorest countries on earth, was an aircraft that had been deemed unfit for use in Europe.

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In addition to his remarks on safety, Bisignani also called for more airlines to implement IATA’s Operational Safety Audit program.

Despite an agreement proposed in 2006 only Syria and Egypt have implemented the internationally recognised and accepted evaluation program as a standard requirement.

According to IATA, the program has been designed to assess the operational management and control systems of an airline.

Bisignani also cited recent statistics by IATA to show that despite impressive growth figures, profits were still low.

The latest figures from the industry body show that capacity increases outstrip passenger demand by 5%.