CONGO AND AVIATION SAFETY – A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS
(Posted 17th December 2019)
Congo’s already damaged reputation when it comes to aviation safety has taken a further knock, when news emerged from Kinshasa that the aviation authorities had very quietly lifted the suspension of Busy Bee Airlines which on the 24th of November suffered a devastating crash in Goma.
It took the authorities already nearly two weeks before a grounding order went out in the first place, only to be lifted nine days afterwards, leaving aviation observers and pundits speechless.
Busy Bee, as reported by ATCNews, had suffered an earlier crash but without casualties at the time, before the ill fated flight in November killed all but one on board and several people on the ground.
A regular aviation source from Goma suggested that local politicians leaned on the aviation authorities in Kinshasa to lift the suspension, getting the killer airline back into the air with apparently little regard for safety issues and allegedly more interested in their own benefits from forcing this decision.
It is little wonder that given such horrific circumstances the EU retains every airline registered in Congo on their blacklist, banning flights into and across European Union airspace.
https://atcnews.org/2019/11/25/goma-crash-kills-all-on-board-and-more-on-the-ground/
https://atcnews.org/2019/12/07/congo-caa-grounds-busy-bee-airlines/
