IATA Operational Audits - the IOSA Blessing

It has recently been announced that PIA are about to be banned by most of Europe on safety grounds and yet they are a current IATA member with a valid IOSA registration (IATA Operations Safety Audit). One might wonder what these IOSA audits really achieve, apart from now being a requirement for IATA membership. Could the explanation be that airlines are EU banned because of that country's Civil Aviation Authority poor performance (inspection, safety oversight etc) and not necessarily because of the airline's own safety record. Check the EU "blacklist". There are some reputable airlines on that, even though they have an excellent safety record. So is it always fair to name and shame the airline itself? Has the EU blacklist, IOSA (or even the FAA's IASA) become to some extent a politicization of aviation safety? Or is it just another jumping through hoops exercise designed to bolster public confidence? It's notable that ICAO conducted a safety check on Ansett's maintenance organization and gave it a clean bill of health just prior to its demise. Ansett went to the wall in large part because of the discovery of unimplemented airworthiness directives that had slipped through the (literal) cracks, causing fleet groundings.

The UK CAA fully supports the IOSA by IATA as a good safety oversight tool against which an airline could measure itself. However the UK CAA does not support IOSA by IATA when IATA says that it is the only safety check needed. In fact, confusingly, only the new PIA 777s (7 of) are now allowed into Europe. That would seem to imply that the EU are not happy with the safety of the rest of the PIA fleet...some 36 other aircraft? There may be other commercial factors in play. IOSA also means business for the IATA Safety, Operations and Infrastructure division, the IATA Marketing and Commercial Services division as well as the accredited audit organizations and the endorsed training organizations. Once they subject themselves to the expensive multi-stage process, do any of the candidates fail?

IOSA was originally conceived to reduce the number of safety audits carriers make on each other for commercial purposes (e.g. codeshare), saving money for the carriers. It developed from there to become a system that has been endorsed by several CAA's from the "first world" as well as the developing countries. IATA is, after all, only a trade organization that's there to make money to support themselves and promote the commercial interests of member airlines. Independent consultants can write a report that may sound great but has no force in law. Some claim that the real money-spinner in IOSA is in the pre-IOSA practice audits. You can find the IOSA checklists on the IATA website www.iata.org/iosa if you want to see what a carrier has to achieve to be IOSA compliant.