Again "great" reporting by a news agency.
One will always have the risks of aircraft accidents, especially with humans in the chain of events, maybe due to poor maintenance standards, bad weather, poor flight training, bad decision making or whatever.
The DGAC were not aware of the fact that the Colombian airline in question, operating in Venezuela from the Caribbean island of Martinique, killing 152 French citizens, were heavily fined for non compliance w.r.t. maintenance and other safety related issues. If they were, they would have put out an advisory to their nationals in that country. Standard practice, as it is in the USA and elsewhere in Europe.
Preventing these airlines entry could be to try and shift blame for not doing their job properly, and now suddenly trying to show that they are retroactively trying to prevent or reduce the amount of French nationals from flying with these airlines and by doing so reducing the risk of them dying, abroad or on home soil for that matter.
But that said, Air France hasn't really had a squeaky clean reputation themselves, not considering the recent spate of accidents including an A320 on 26 June 1988, Concorde on 25 July 2000 and an A340 overrunning the runway and bursting into flames on 2 Aug 2005.
This excludes the numerous attempted and successful hijackings (at least 9) over the years, one where an Algerian crowd wanted to fly the aircraft into the Eiffel Tower. Sounds familiar, doesn't it. The body count might not have been as high as the Twin Towers, but I ask you, would this have got the French, British and Americans off to fighting terrorism in Iraq? Somehow I don’t think so.
But then, I don’t see the DGAC preventing Air France from operating from their own soil or else where in the world for that matter... even if they are a danger to themselves...
By the way, should you go to the LAM website, Paris, in actual fact France is not one of their destinations, so nothing new there, just hot French air being blown.
All I say is sweep your own doorstep first, but I suppose it is a sweep in the right direction.
Now… If you want to fly safe, give Qantas a try. Well done mates, keep up the good work. All you have to do now is sort out the Brits in the Ashes and the Kiwi’s in the rugby and all will be as right as rain!!
Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Fra...and_accidents:
(Not the Alpha & Omega of accident data, but sufficient for illustration.)