AVIATION : AVOIDING ACCIDENTS THROUGH BETTER INVESTIGATION.

The European Commission wishes to review Community legislation relating to the manner in which accidents and incidents are followed up in civil aviation. To this end, it has launched a consultation, which will remain open until 2 March 2007. The aim is to adapt Directive 94/56/EC establishing aviation accident safety investigation and the subsequent Directive 2003/42 on the reporting of cases involving safety concerns. The first of these establishes the obligation to conduct an enquiry after all accidents/incidents and the latter obliges member states to store the information learnt from these incidents in a database and to engage in the exchange of this information.

In preparing for the revision of these directives, the Commission is following the advice of a group of experts whose conclusions in May 2006 called for the texts to be adapted.aThe aim, in view of the anticipated increase in air traffic in Europe in the coming decades, is...