European Union may not downgrade aviation safety rating of Israel-based airlines

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of Israel’s Transportation Ministry has said that the European Union does not intend to downgrade the safety rating of Israeli airlines following talks held in Brussels between the officials of the Israel Airports Authority (IAA) and a representative of the European Union over the flight safety of overseas carriers.

The statement from Israel’s Civil Aviation Authority comes about three weeks after aviation regulators of the European Union had declared that they were making the safety tests stricter for airlines based in Israel. This followed a memorandum issued by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) – the international trade body representing about 230 airlines worldwide and comprising 93% of scheduled international air traffic – telling Israel-based airlines that they must upgrade their safety and security steps or risk being banned from airports in the European Union or even prohibited from overflying Europe.

Israel’s Civil Aviation Authority said in a press release that the foreign airlines safety division of the European Union was “satisfied with Israel’s efforts to maintain and improve aviation safety.”

The CAA also said that Israel was currently in the process of restoring its Category-1 safety status in the United States after the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) downgraded Israel’s aviation safety ranking. The FAA had moved Israel from Category 1 to Category 2 after an assessment. According to the FAA, the rating is not related to security issues but to standard safety matters.

In a statement, the FAA said the reason for the change in status was problems related to flight safety and oversight which had not yet been solved at airports in Israel, including Ben-Gurion International Airport.

And, just a week ago, the US Federal Aviation Administration had downgraded Israel’s aviation safety standard rating to that of Third World countries – a move that would hit Israel-based carriers hard and severely harm Israel’s international standing as well as restrict the activity of Israeli carriers in the United States.

Meanwhile, Israir Airlines, the airline based in Tel Aviv, Israel, said it had topped the International Air Transport Association’s Operational Safety Audit, in addition to being awarded IATA’s “highest safety ranking.” The website ynetnews.com quoted Amir Porat, Israir Airlines’ deputy director of operations, as saying that Israir has now joined 350 international airlines – including El Al, the national airline of Israel – which have been awarded the “highest safety ranking” by IATA.