Ethiopian Passes Top Aviation Safety Audit

Ethiopian Airlines has successfully passed a top aviation safety audit.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) International Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) was awarded to the airline recently, subsequently benchmarking Ethiopian airline as a top and safe world airline.

There are reportedly only six airlines in the sub Saharan African region that have the IOSA registration.

"The registration is the result of Ethiopian's fundamental commitment to provide safe and reliable air transport services for passengers and cargo," said a statement from the airline.

The Ethiopian Airlines Uganda area manager, Ms. Regassa Ermajachew told Business Week last week that safety is the number one criteria for operating an airline and IOSA safety standards involve complying with a lot of technical details.

"You have to build confidence in the passengers that the airline is safe," said Ermejachew. IOSA is an internationally recognised and accepted evaluation system designed to assess the operational management and control systems of an airline. IOSA uses internationally recognised quality audit principles and is designed so that audits are conducted in a standardized and consistent manner.

Mr Girma Wake, Ethiopian chief executive officer said in the statement that the IOSA registration is another indication that Ethiopian Airlines ranks among the world's best airlines.

"We see this as the first step in entering into new code share agreements that will further integrate our network into those of the global alliances," said Wake.

Inherent in the IOSA programme is a degree of quality, integrity and security such that mutually interested airlines and regulators can all comfortably accept IOSA audit reports. As a result, the aviation industry will be in a position to achieve the benefits of cost-efficiency through a significant reduction in audit redundancy.

The IOSA safeguards allows for a quality audit programme under the continuing stewardship of IATA.