EU Safety Agency Powerless Because of Loopholes in EU Regulation

CAPELLE AAN DEN IJSSEL, The Netherlands, August 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Aircraft Engineers International's executive Board wishes to express its deep concern and fear that aviation safety in Europe is being degraded. During the EU - US International Aviation Safety Conference held in Prague, it was publicly stated that during many audits of EU memberstates Aviation Authorities, the EASA standardization teams had uncovered over one thousand errors in either regulation or the use of the aviation regulation by the authorities as well as airlines in 2006. This is not new, before 2006, hundreds of irregularities were also reported to the EU Commission with a request to initiate appropriate corrective actions. Despite this only few corrective actions have been taken by the European Commission.

This despite the fact that many of the irregularities have a direct negative impact on aviation safety which in turn places EU citizens at higher risk when flying the EU airlines. This lack of political will to ensure that the highest levels of safety are maintained throughout Europe must cease immediately.

AEI calls on the EU commission to implement change now before this scandalous situation turns into one or more disasters.

AEI has repeatedly requested that the EU commission publish these irregularities in order to ensure that all EU citizens are aware of the safety standards employed by European Airlines before deciding with which airline to travel. Despite the safety issue here, our requests have been completely ignored and we have not even received a reply as to why our letters have not been answered.

AEI is seriously concerned about the level of safety in Europe and has therefore declared 2007 the year of the Licensed Aircraft Maintenance Engineer in order to help promote awareness of the growing problem of commercialism over safety. AEI considers it their responsibility to inform the flying public about these safety issues which both industry and governments still continue to ignore.

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