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1. TIACA urges EU to suspend emissions trading scheme for aviation
MANILA, Philippines — The International Air Cargo Association (TIACA) is urging the European Union to suspend implementation of its controversial Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) for aviation and instead pursue a global agreement of aviation carbon emissions through the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
In a letter to EU Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard, TIACA’s Industry Affairs Committee states four main concerns over the upcoming legislation, which from January 1st 2012 would require any airline landing or taking off inside the EU to take part in the regional bloc's emissions trading scheme:
TIACA said EU ETS is a violation of international law and treaties: By directly regulating conduct outside of EU airspace, the EU ETS encroaches upon the sovereign authority of each State over its own airspace.
The Chicago Convention also prohibits any levies on international flights except on a cost basis ‘related to the provision of facilities and services for civil aviation.’
EU ETS will impose massive new taxes on aviation. According to IATA, the cost to airlines of purchasing the necessary carbon allowances will rise from $1.3 billion in 2012 to $3.5 billion in 2020.
“There is no requirement that EU Member States must use these revenues to reduce carbon emissions, either from aviation or any other sector nor that they dedicate the money to any environmental effort at all.”
TIACA stressed that EU ETS is unlikely to improve the environment. Ironically, the EU ETS will cripple the industry’s ability to continue investing on its own in greener technologies.
In recent years, the industry has made impressive progress in reducing emissions, largely through utilization of more efficient aircraft and operating procedures.
Furthermore, the industry has actively supported development of sustainable alternative aviation fuels and implementation of next-generation, more efficient air traffic management systems. (EHL)
2. Airlines fortunes dip as EU enforces ban
THIS is certainly not the best of times for airline operators in Africa, as they have continued to count their losses following the blanket ban on their operations in Europe by the European Union.
For an industry that has been struggling to survive since the global economic recession, which created a lull both at the national and global aviation spheres, the blacklisting of airlines by the Commission in May this year, has further affected the fortunes of these airlines in the third quarter.
At the last count over 259 known airlines from 18 countries were listed on the EU’s blacklist, with 15 African worst hit.
History of ban
In 2006, EU banned 92 airlines, most of them from Africa, declaring that they did not meet international aviation standards.
The EU created the blacklist in response to several fatal airline crashes in Greece, Italy, and Egypt in 2004 and 2005 and had since updated the list. As at July 2010, the list had grown to over 278 airlines.
Justification for ban
In March 2010, the European Commission announced the ban on all Sudanese air carriers.
The civil aviation authority of Sudan has been criticised with “persistent non-compliance with international standards in the area of oversight.”
The ban came as no surprise to the national airline of Sudan Airways that has suffered from a poor safety reputation for years.
In June 2008, 29 people perished after one of its aircraft burned after landing in Khartoum – one of several incidents.
A few weeks later, Sudan’s aviation authority issued a statement stating that the whole airline had been grounded for a month due to breaking aviation and operational rules.
The argument from AFRAA is that the banning of an airline does not only prohibits that airline from operating to the EU but also impacts its ticket sales to other destinations, including on code shared routes (a flight which is operated by one airline, but marketed by another).
Travel agents and airline partners in the EU are required by regulation at the time of sales or booking to notify passengers that the airline is blacklisted.
The result is that it denies potential revenue to African airlines including those that meet stringent safety regulations while facing intense competition from major European carriers such as Air France-KLM, Lufthansa and British Airways.
Rash of reactions
The adoption of this policy has not gone without protest by the African aviation community and questions have been raised as to who is the ultimate beneficiary of this policy.The Nairobi-based African Airlines Association (AFRAA) has publicly admitted that Africa needs to improve its air safety record and that while the EU list may be well intended; its main achievement has been to “undermine international confidence in the African airline industry.” AFRAA has pointed out that a blacklist has not proved to be helpful in solving the safety problem in Africa.
The region’s delegates to the 20th Air Finance for Africa Aviation conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, last week, said if the European Union (EU) is concerned about safety, it should have adopted an approach similar to the United States (U.S.) safe sky policy instead of an outright blacklist of the operators.
The airline chiefs who were on the same page with officials of the African Union (AU) also queried the actions of the EU counterparts in banning the operators from flying into Europe.
The U.S. created the Safe Skies for Africa Programme (SSFA) to promote sustainable improvements in aviation safety and security in Africa, and to create the environment necessary to foster the growth of aviation services between the continent and the U.S.
Nick Fadugba, convener of the conference and renowned aviation consultant and EU First Consular, Mr. Graeme Preston, said the ban exists because Europeans demand information on any airline in Africa, Middle East, and Asia.
Fadugba urged the EU to partner with airlines in Africa with the assistance from its inspectors to work with African Civil Aviation Commission (AFCAC) on solutions to the problems rather than blanket ban.
He said Africa could also ban European carriers from their skies if EU refuses to convince the world that the continent’s airspace is not safe.
But the EU pledged its readiness to work with African airlines but without compromising on safety standards.
The EU’s hammer fell on airlines from 14 African countries, thus barring them from landing in European airports.
Fadugba however noted that the recent ban on LAM Mozambique was facilitated by information supplied by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the global aviation regulatory body over the carrier’s alleged safety deficiency.
He said: “We are ready to work with the AU, the airlines, with countries which have safety issues, but we will not compromise on safety. Blacklist is the invention of the media; we don’t call it blacklist, we call it operating safety list.”
The expert said AU should not misconstrue the measure to mean selective treatment of the continent’s airlines, stressing that besides Africa, he said, so many other airlines from the Philippines, Karzastan and others, which have appalling safety records had equally been sanctioned.
He said it was unfortunate that Europe becomes the beneficiary of these bans, citing the case of Air Ivoire, which had ceased operations, with Air France taking monopoly of the defunct carrier’s operations and allegedly charging higher fares to Europe.
“I can see the perception of the EU ban by Africa. When these African airlines are banned, European airlines begin to take over, to service these routes hitherto operated by the airlines. African airlines will be making a huge mistake if they start pointing accusing finger at EU, rather, it should challenge Africa on air safety,” he said.
Experts’ perspective
In the view of a member of the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), who would not be named, he said, while it is widely accepted that the EU airline ban may help to raise safety standards by pushing African airlines to tighten their safety belts, the execution of the policy however may need to be revisited.
Elijah Chingosho, AFRAA’s secretary general claims European countries, especially France, are using the blacklist, which bans airlines deemed unsafe from flying into EU airspace, to block African carriers from competing on African routes.
Expatiating, he said nine out of Air France’s ten most profitable routes are to Africa. AFRAA is pressing the EU to review its approach to the EU blacklist.
“One European country can ban an airline, but it requires a majority agreement among EU member states to remove the ban, Chingosho argued.
Earlier this year, the EC banned two Air Madagascar 767 planes from entering European airspace on “safety grounds”. The partial ban has affected its services to Paris.
Speaking at an Aviation Business Seminar in Nairobi, Chingosho criticised the EU bans of its two airline members. He said: “These two airlines have good safety records.”
AFRAA said: “According to the Flight Safety Foundation, Air France has had 23 major accidents (involving substantial damage to aircraft, serious or fatal injuries) since 1990, three of them with fatalities, and a total of 348 deaths.”
This includes the crash of Air France Flight 447, which plunged in the Atlantic Ocean on June 1 2009, killing all 288 passengers.
Improving Africa’s poor safety record
Chingosho acknowledges African countries must improve the continent’s airline safety.
IATA, which represents airlines globally, recently called for political leadership in Africa to address its poor safety record.
Africa had the world’s worst safety record in 2010, according to IATA, which measures airline safety in hull losses- accidents that involve an aircraft being destroyed or damaged beyond economical repair – per million flights.
Against a global average of 0.61 hull losses per million flights in 2010 – the lowest accident rate to-date – the figure in Africa was 7.41 hull losses per million flights -12 times greater.
Africa’s record was still in better shape compared to 2009, with 9.94 hull losses.
But Africa has made good progress in some countries, including Ethiopia, South Africa and Kenya, which have airlines with high safety standards, including Ethiopian Airlines, Kenya Airways and South Africa Airways, analysts have said.
AFRAA has publicly admitted that Africa needs to improve its air safety record and that while the EU list may be well intended; its main achievement has been to “undermine international confidence in the African airline industry.”
“This organisation is perplexed by the inclusion of such companies -”While the net losers are African carriers, the net beneficiaries are always the EU carriers that swiftly step in to fill the vacuum and take the market share of the banned airlines,” said Dr Elijah Chingosho secretary general of AFRAA.
The criterion for imposing a ban is not whether or not they fly into the EU but whether or not they comply with ICAO safety standards. Consequently, as provided in European rules, passengers are informed about the airlines which are subject to an operating ban in the EU, so that they are able to make informed choices about the airlines with which they travel.”
IATA’s outgoing Director General Giovanni Bisignani commented on the issue by saying that – ‘there is no competition’ when it comes to safety. Cooperation is the way forward. We have a common goal of zero accidents and zero fatalities.”
3. Cusi, Devanadera tagged in poll fraud
MANILA, Philippines - A former Shari’a court judge yesterday implicated former Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) chairman Alfredo Cusi and former acting justice secretary Agnes Devanadera in the alleged massive cheating in Mindanao in the 2004 presidential elections.
Testifying before a Senate inquiry on suspected anomalous helicopter purchases by the police, Nagamura Moner also implicated former interior secretary Ronaldo Puno in the fraud.
Earlier, Moner had said former first gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo handed out bribes to manipulate the poll results and ensure the victory of his wife, former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, against the late actor Fernando Poe Jr.
Moner accused Devanadera of trying to cover up the poll fraud allegations. He said Devanadera, then undersecretary for legal affairs, was the one who coached him and about 16 election officers in June 2004 to say that the elections were credible in Mindanao.
The meeting allegedly took place on June 5 at Oakwood Hotel in Makati City, where he returned about P1.780 million to Cusi. The amount was what remained of an aggregate P8 million used in poll cheating.
Moner also revealed efforts by former President Arroyo to reach out to him to make sure that he would not spill the beans on his role during the 2004 elections.
“I met with GMA inside a room at the Pryce Hotel in Cagayan de Oro City with Bert Gonzales and I told her that she has no problem with me, to which she said, thank you,” Moner said, referring to former national security adviser Norberto Gonzales, a known Arroyo ally.
Prior to this, Moner said he received P3 million from his brother-in-law, Efren Bollozos, to talk him and his team out of publicly revealing what they knew about the 2004 poll fraud.
According to him, it was at this point that he met Cusi to thresh out the “restiveness” of his associates “so they will not expose their participation or involvement in the cheating.”
Moner said it was Cusi who instructed him to meet and tell the former president that “she has no problem with me as far as the election was concerned.”
He also named election officer Renault Macarambon, who was mentioned in the so-called “Hello, Garci” tapes as the one taking care of Lanao del Sur for ex-president Arroyo “not to worry” about her lead in Mindanao.
PHILIPPINES AVIATION NEWS
Aviation NEWS By
Neha Jain
Aviation NEWS Reporter
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