Dakar, Senegal – The pilot pressed a flask-sized bottle of vodka to his lips and swallowed deeply before piloting his geriatric aircraft down a jungle runway in eastern Congo.
The Antonov, flying valuable tin ore and two passengers out of the war-battered region, made the trip safely that day. But many others don’t.
Citing safety concerns, the European Union banned 92 airlines Wednesday from its airspace. Most of the airlines are from Africa, where planes are six times likelier to crash than elsewhere and travelers swap tales of crises averted.
In announcing the ban on virtually all aircraft overseen by civil aviation authorities in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Equatorial Guinea, Swaziland and Congo from landing at European airports, EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot labeled many of the planes “flying coffins.”
Wednesday’s ban and earlier similar orders rankle many Africans. They point out that most of the banned airlines no longer operate and never flew to Europe anyway, while Africans have little choice but to use them to hop around the world’s poorest continent.
The deputy director of civil aviation in Sierra Leone, which had 13 airlines banned, said his country had not had a safety audit by the main aviation- industry oversight group since the end of the country’s brutal 1989-2002 civil war.
The troubles in African nations are the same stymieing its aviation industry: poverty, conflict and poor governance. With little oversight, safety audits go undone and small problems are left unattended.
In Nigeria late last year, two planes flying domestic routes crashed within seven weeks of each other, killing 224 people, including dozens of schoolchildren heading home for Christmas holidays.
A continentwide trend of economic liberalization may be fueling faster-than-average passenger growth as former state- owned airlines go private.
“You’ve got the general problem of poverty and lack of government capacity. In Africa, everyone is encouraged to privatize, but there is a very important role of the state, strengthening oversight and regulatory mechanisms as you open up the economy,” said Princeton Lyman, a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, currently a Council on Foreign Affairs fellow.
Even many of Africa’s larger airlines fly secondhand aircraft purchased from overseas. Many other airlines, particularly in vast Congo, fly rickety old jets or propeller-driven planes, including some old military aircraft converted to passenger aircraft with the addition of plastic patio-style chairs.
