Checking international airline's safety? Good luck

You can check fares, fees and flight schedules for just about any airline in the world with a few keystrokes or a single phone call. But checking safety of an international airline is much more complicated.

European and U.S. regulators evaluate aviation safety, and the airline industry itself has a worldwide safety-audit program, but it's difficult for travelers to check airline safety when buying tickets.

That's unfortunate. It's been a bad year for aviation fatalities, with more than 700 people killed in 16 crashes around the world so far in 2009. Many involved little-known airlines -- some already on watch lists for safety concerns.

"There's no perfect solution at the moment, but it's undoubtedly getting better," said Geoff Want, adviser on airline safety at Rio Tinto Group, a global mining company that has its own list of carriers approved for employee travel.

Government regulators in Europe and the United States take different approaches.

The European Union evaluates airlines and their planes and publishes a "blacklist" of unacceptable carriers, updated two weeks ago. The blacklist is on the Internet at ec.europa.eu/transport/air-ban/doc/list_en.pdf.

Be prepared, it's long and complex: 233 airlines are completely banned, and eight are allowed to operate under restrictions. Though its focus started as an airline-by-airline evaluation, the EU has moved toward building the list on evaluations of countries -- all airlines from 15 countries have a blanket ban from the EU.

The FAA says 101 countries have been assessed; 79 have Category 1 status, meaning the United States believes the country meets international standards, and 22 fall into Category 2. Category 2 doesn't mean airlines from that country are banned, only that new service and airline passenger-sharing ties are frozen. That can have economic impact on a country and its airlines, and the threat of a downgrade can prompt improvement.

India was notified it didn't meet standards and was given time to make changes. Earlier this year, after India increased the number of airline inspectors and made other changes, the FAA declared India met requirements to stay Category 1.

The FAA won't discuss specific reasons a country is listed in Category 2, except to say all assessments are fact-based evaluations. In the case of Israel, which is Category 2, aviation-industry officials say concerns relate to air-traffic-control routings at some Israeli airports.

An FAA spokeswoman says its International Aviation Safety Assessments list, available at www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/iasa/media/iasaws.xls, is "one tool a consumer can use."

There's little overlap between the FAA and EU lists. Airlines from Angola, Benin, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Liberia, Gabon, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Rwanda and Zambia are banned on the EU list, but those countries aren't evaluated at all by the FAA. U.S. and EU regulators share concerns about Congo, Indonesia and Swaziland. The FAA rates Zimbabwe, Israel, the Philippines, Serbia and Montenegro plus several Latin American and Caribbean nations, including Belize, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua, in Category 2, but not the EU.

Guenther Matschnigg, the IATA's senior vice president for safety, operations and infrastructure, said the requirements include things such as enhanced ground-proximity warning devices in cockpits, which sound an alarm for pilots when flying toward a mountain or other hazard. To comply with the IATA Operational Safety Audit, several airlines had to install the warning devices.

"We put some teeth into it," Matschnigg said.