Last week the European Union (EU) published its latest list of air carriers subject to a ban on operating in its airspace. The list covers 287 airlines from 20 countries.
Under the list, the European Commission (EC) has maintained its ban forbidding all Mozambican air companies from flying in EU airspace, and warns that “we will not remove an air carrier from the list unless we have clear evidence that the safety issue has been resolved”.
In April 2011, the EC declared that “all air carriers certified in Mozambique have been banned from flying into the EU ... because of significant safety deficiencies requiring decisive action”.
Those deficiencies did not concern Mozambique Airlines (LAM), or any other Mozambican air company, but the regulatory agency, the Mozambican Civil Aviation Institute (IACM).
Contacted by news agency, AIM, a spokesperson from the office of Siim Kallas, the vice-president of the European Commission with responsibility for transport, said: “We are still in the process of obtaining information from the Mozambique civil aviation authorities as part of the process of reviewing cases to be removed from the list.”