Germany Trails European Peers in Enforcing Air-Safety Rules, Report
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Only Greece has more unresolved safety lapses, according to confidential report by EU aviation watchdog
An aerial photo of Germany's Cologne-Bonn Airport, which failed an
audit by European security inspectors earlier this year.
Germany is one of Europe's worst enforcers of air safety rules, trailing only Greece in failing to comply with basic requirements to protect passengers, according to a confidential report by Europe's top aviation watchdog.
German regulators failed to uphold or enforce European Union air safety rules in more than 15 sensitive areas, according to the report, dated March 7 and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The country-Europe's biggest economy and home to some of the continent's most-traveled air hubs, including Frankfurt Airport-had 18 unresolved safety lapses, more than smaller and far less wealthy countries including Bosnia, Slovakia and Albania.
Recent audits of Germany's Luftfahrtbundesamt, or LBA, the country's equivalent of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, found the agency faced "a chronic shortage of staff" to monitor aviation activities. The audits were conducted by the EU's European Aviation Safety Agency, or EASA, based in Cologne, Germany, and compiled into an annual report.
EU officials have criticized German aviation oversight a number of times over the past decade. But the EASA report makes clear that many findings of German shortcomings have remained unresolved through successive audits in recent years.
The audits are tallied into a confidential annual report mainly focused on categories of air-safety concerns across Europe, and only two tables in the 108-page document for 2015 break out national performance. But in both, Germany stands out, particularly among affluent Western European countries with large aviation industries, for having so many unresolved safety issues.
The report gives no explanation of Greece's 21 unresolved safety lapses, but the cash-strapped country has faced an economic crisis for almost a decade.
One EASA audit of Germany's LBA last year, which became part of the annual report, found four shortcomings critical to safety. These included the LBA's failure to spot airline deficiencies meeting crew-training requirements and to detect cases when aircrews had exceeded their duty-time limits. Crew fatigue is a major concern in aviation safety.
EASA's audits rated government aviation agencies, not airlines. Deutsche Lufthansa AG, which includes the discount carrier Germanwings and is Germany's largest airline, has a strong safety record comparable to other leading Western carriers, with training and maintenance programs widely considered to be in the industry's top tier.
EU authorities have repeatedly clashed with German aviation-oversight bodies. These covered both safety issues, related to avoiding accidents, and security problems, linked to preventing terrorism.
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, in 2011 took the highly unusual step of putting Germany on its list of aviation-safety alerts, known as the airline blacklist. The commission last year sued Germany in an EU court over airport-security failures. In November 2014, EASA warned that chronic staffing shortfalls could undermine German regulators' ability to run checks of carriers and crew, including medical checks.
Four months later, Andreas Lubitz, a Germanwings co-pilot who suffered from depression, crashed a plane into the French Alps, killing all 150 people onboard. The EASA annual report makes no mention of the Germanwings disaster.
An accident report prepared by French authorities said a series of doctors, including from the German government, saw Mr. Lubitz for mental health problems ahead of the crash but didn't notify authorities. None of the medical practitioners agreed to speak to crash investigators.
According to the confidential March report, EASA had gone back to Germany authorities in at least 26 cases to notify them of deficient action plans. In 10 cases, the concerns relate to high-priority items the report didn't spell out.
Germany has recently suffered a spate of aviation security and safety lapses. German police and airport officials this month called for a review of how security checks were handled after Cologne-Bonn Airport this year failed an audit by EU security inspectors.
Germany's police union called for the government to retake control of airline-passenger screening. Much of the service has been outsourced to private security firms.
Frankfurt Airport, one of Europe's busiest hubs, last year also flunked an inspection, according to an aviation security official. In that case, security personnel working on behalf of the German police failed to spot weapons.
Officials for the Cologne-Bonn Airport, which handles more than 10 million passengers annually, last week said it had mistakenly made elements of an emergency response plan publicly accessible on the Internet. The airport said the document didn't contain sensitive information but quickly withdrew it.
The policing lapses come amid an increasing focus on tightening airport security following a series of terrorist attacks on commercial aviation, including last month's bombing of Brussels Airport, in which at least 16 people died.
Belgian transport minister Jacqueline Galant resigned this month amid allegations that she ignored warnings over shortcomings in security monitoring at the country's airports. The EU executive had repeatedly warned that the country's civil aviation authority wasn't conducting sufficient checks at Belgian airports.
Airport security concerns have increased after the downing of a Russian passenger plane that killed all 224 people onboard. Officials believe a bomb was smuggled onto the plane at an Egyptian airport. Earlier this year, a bomb was brought onboard a Daallo Airlines plane departing Somalia's Mogadishu Airport.
German shortfalls partly reflect long-running understaffing at the Luftfahrtbundesamt, industry official said. Posts have frequently been filled by staff from other ministries facing downsizing, putting inexperienced personnel in charge of aviation oversight. Sebastian Dreyer, head of security at the German Aviation Association, a trade group, said the LBA had remedied staffing shortfalls and was providing effective oversight. "The security controls conducted in Germany at airports and by the airlines easily meet European standards," he said.
Germany has moved to address legislative shortcomings that underpin the EU complaints. A new aviation law to address EU concerns was passed by parliament this month and, an industry official said, a new law on aviation security could be passed by year-end.
The European Commission, the bloc's executive arm, last year filed a case against Germany with the EU Court of Justice "for failing to regularly monitor all aviation security measures at some German airports, as required by EU legislation."
The commission brought the case after Germany failed to address its concerns despite earlier warnings. The case remains open.
In 2011, EASA officials warned that Germany, Italy, Greece and some other countries weren't complying with EASA-mandated oversight requirements.
Germany is one of Europe's worst enforcers of air safety rules, trailing only Greece in failing to comply with basic requirements to protect passengers, according to a confidential report by Europe's top aviation watchdog.
German regulators failed to uphold or enforce European Union air safety rules in more than 15 sensitive areas, according to the report, dated March 7 and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The country-Europe's biggest economy and home to some of the continent's most-traveled air hubs, including Frankfurt Airport-had 18 unresolved safety lapses, more than smaller and far less wealthy countries including Bosnia, Slovakia and Albania.
Recent audits of Germany's Luftfahrtbundesamt, or LBA, the country's equivalent of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, found the agency faced "a chronic shortage of staff" to monitor aviation activities. The audits were conducted by the EU's European Aviation Safety Agency, or EASA, based in Cologne, Germany, and compiled into an annual report.
EU officials have criticized German aviation oversight a number of times over the past decade. But the EASA report makes clear that many findings of German shortcomings have remained unresolved through successive audits in recent years.
The audits are tallied into a confidential annual report mainly focused on categories of air-safety concerns across Europe, and only two tables in the 108-page document for 2015 break out national performance. But in both, Germany stands out, particularly among affluent Western European countries with large aviation industries, for having so many unresolved safety issues.
The report gives no explanation of Greece's 21 unresolved safety lapses, but the cash-strapped country has faced an economic crisis for almost a decade.
One EASA audit of Germany's LBA last year, which became part of the annual report, found four shortcomings critical to safety. These included the LBA's failure to spot airline deficiencies meeting crew-training requirements and to detect cases when aircrews had exceeded their duty-time limits. Crew fatigue is a major concern in aviation safety.
EASA's audits rated government aviation agencies, not airlines. Deutsche Lufthansa AG, which includes the discount carrier Germanwings and is Germany's largest airline, has a strong safety record comparable to other leading Western carriers, with training and maintenance programs widely considered to be in the industry's top tier.
EU authorities have repeatedly clashed with German aviation-oversight bodies. These covered both safety issues, related to avoiding accidents, and security problems, linked to preventing terrorism.
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, in 2011 took the highly unusual step of putting Germany on its list of aviation-safety alerts, known as the airline blacklist. The commission last year sued Germany in an EU court over airport-security failures. In November 2014, EASA warned that chronic staffing shortfalls could undermine German regulators' ability to run checks of carriers and crew, including medical checks.
Four months later, Andreas Lubitz, a Germanwings co-pilot who suffered from depression, crashed a plane into the French Alps, killing all 150 people onboard. The EASA annual report makes no mention of the Germanwings disaster.
An accident report prepared by French authorities said a series of doctors, including from the German government, saw Mr. Lubitz for mental health problems ahead of the crash but didn't notify authorities. None of the medical practitioners agreed to speak to crash investigators.
According to the confidential March report, EASA had gone back to Germany authorities in at least 26 cases to notify them of deficient action plans. In 10 cases, the concerns relate to high-priority items the report didn't spell out.
Germany has recently suffered a spate of aviation security and safety lapses. German police and airport officials this month called for a review of how security checks were handled after Cologne-Bonn Airport this year failed an audit by EU security inspectors.
Germany's police union called for the government to retake control of airline-passenger screening. Much of the service has been outsourced to private security firms.
Frankfurt Airport, one of Europe's busiest hubs, last year also flunked an inspection, according to an aviation security official. In that case, security personnel working on behalf of the German police failed to spot weapons.
Officials for the Cologne-Bonn Airport, which handles more than 10 million passengers annually, last week said it had mistakenly made elements of an emergency response plan publicly accessible on the Internet. The airport said the document didn't contain sensitive information but quickly withdrew it.
The policing lapses come amid an increasing focus on tightening airport security following a series of terrorist attacks on commercial aviation, including last month's bombing of Brussels Airport, in which at least 16 people died.
Belgian transport minister Jacqueline Galant resigned this month amid allegations that she ignored warnings over shortcomings in security monitoring at the country's airports. The EU executive had repeatedly warned that the country's civil aviation authority wasn't conducting sufficient checks at Belgian airports.
Airport security concerns have increased after the downing of a Russian passenger plane that killed all 224 people onboard. Officials believe a bomb was smuggled onto the plane at an Egyptian airport. Earlier this year, a bomb was brought onboard a Daallo Airlines plane departing Somalia's Mogadishu Airport.
German shortfalls partly reflect long-running understaffing at the Luftfahrtbundesamt, industry official said. Posts have frequently been filled by staff from other ministries facing downsizing, putting inexperienced personnel in charge of aviation oversight. Sebastian Dreyer, head of security at the German Aviation Association, a trade group, said the LBA had remedied staffing shortfalls and was providing effective oversight. "The security controls conducted in Germany at airports and by the airlines easily meet European standards," he said.
Germany has moved to address legislative shortcomings that underpin the EU complaints. A new aviation law to address EU concerns was passed by parliament this month and, an industry official said, a new law on aviation security could be passed by year-end.
The European Commission, the bloc's executive arm, last year filed a case against Germany with the EU Court of Justice "for failing to regularly monitor all aviation security measures at some German airports, as required by EU legislation."
The commission brought the case after Germany failed to address its concerns despite earlier warnings. The case remains open.
In 2011, EASA officials warned that Germany, Italy, Greece and some other countries weren't complying with EASA-mandated oversight requirements.
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