Which are the Safest Airlines in Africa?

Which are the Safest Airlines in Africa?

How safe are African Airlines? When the EU blacklist came out, the African Airlines Association was up in arms. Nick Fadugba,AFRAA Secretary General described the ban as “undermining international confidence in African aviation “ making   European carriers the “ultimate beneficiaries” who will dominate the African skies to the disadvantage of African carriers!

With 111 carriers from 13 African countries banned, the list does indeed undermine African aviation; travellers will obviously consider flying major carriers like KLM/AF or Lufthansa at the expense of the ‘unsafe’ African carriers! The list was particularly ruthless with African airlines. So what criteria did the EU use to issue its unilateral verdict? It crystallises into 3 major points:

•         Use of poorly maintained, obsolete aircraft(Criteria used to ban most African airlines with old soviet era fleet)

•          Inability of airlines to rectify shortcomings identified during inspections by EU Air Safety Committee.

•         Inability of a civil aviation authority responsible for overseeing an airline to perform its task properly(Criteria was used to ban all airlines from Sudan, Iran)

African airlines face safety challenges due to poor infrastructure; lack of capacity, poor oversight and policies and unhealthy finances that impede rapid fleet modernization.Also, according to David Learmount, Flight International Operations and Safety Editor, African airlines do not have the “luxury of a safety culture“ since less developed countries tend to have less emphasis on a strong safety culture in the airline operations!Africa aviation is often associated with the "Flying Coffins",old Soviet era Antonov aircraft with notorious safety records!

An Antonov 225

In spite of the challenges, several African airlines have earned IATA’s IOSA Certification, a global standard for airline safety management. We have compiled a list of top 10 safest African airlines based on

whether the airline is IOSA or ISAGO Certified(As IATA CEO Giovanni Bisignani once advised African aviation stakeholders, “being in the IOSA is a strong argument that you have met the highest standards in safety”); number of serious incidents or accidents since 2000,no of deaths for every a hundred thousand departures.

  Here are our Top 10 safest Airlines in Africa:
            1.South African Airways
            2.Ethiopian Airlines
            3.Air Botswana
            4.Air Mauritius
            5.Air Seychelles
            6.Kenya Airways
            7.TunisAir
            8.Royal Air Maroc
            9.Nigerian Eagle Airlines
            10.Air Zimbabwe