Pressure from the Helios crash victims' families continues to be applied on the Cypriot CAA and on the government regarding the Helios rebranding issue. Below is a follow-up article on the current status of the matter published today by the Cyprus Mail online edition.
Name change won’t save Helios if guilty
By Elias Hazou
AJET, the successor airline to disaster-stricken Helios, will not get off scot-free if the probe into last August’s crash finds the company liable, no matter under what name it is flying, the government has pledged.
The assurances came as debate continued to rage yesterday over whether the airline’s change of name to ajet might exonerate it from blame for the tragedy that cost the lives of 121 people.
A furore erupted last month when it was revealed that a new company, ajet, had applied to Civil Aviation for a licence and would be using the assets and flight code of Helios. The company had also applied for an Air Operator’s License (AOC) to operate as a charter airline.
Helios says it had long contemplated changing its business model and denied this was a ploy to evade justice. And it cited corporate law, according to which ultimately, any liability claims are guaranteed by Helios’ insurers.
Ajet’s AOC application is now pending with Civil Aviation, which has asked the Attorney-general’s office for a legal opinion.
In the meantime, Helios’ aircraft are flying under the ajet livery but with the Helios ZU flight codes; even more confusingly, Helios as a business entity has been stricken from the records of the Registrar of Companies.
This has further upset the victims’ relatives, who see the airline’s moves as being in bad taste and also worry about the safety of the ‘new’ company.
When the affair surfaced a month ago, authorities seemed baffled as to what Helios was and was not allowed to do, inadvertently feeding speculation that a cover-up was in the works.
Gradually, however, it emerged that the government was simply going through its paces.
Even yesterday Transport Minister Harris Thrasou was unwilling to commit to a clear answer, saying it was up to the AG to decide whether ajet could fly as a charter carrier.
Asked on CyBC radio about the mix-up with the names, flights codes and so forth, Thrasou offered:
“There is no similar precedent in Cyprus…we’re new at this.”
But he said the switch of names per se was not the real issue at stake.
His sentiments were echoed by government spokesman George Lillikas, who told reporters that the Registrar of Companies had no choice but to accept Helios’ application to be renamed to ajet.
“We need to realise in Cyprus that we have laws, and that these laws cannot be interpreted differently by different agencies
“In the event the [crash] probe is damning on the airline, it shall be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, irrespective of what name it carries. If the company is found to be liable, its planes will be grounded,” added Lillikas.
“There is no possibility of the airline getting away with it, so to speak.”
But Elias Pavlakis, a lawyer representing the bereaved relatives, was far from reassured.
He said that for a new AOC to be issued, a series of control procedures had to be carried out, irrespective of whether the airline applying already had all the necessary infrastructure and organisation in place.
“Also, the name of the airline – in this case ajet – is always the first item to appear on an AOC,” he said.
Moreover, Pavlakis cited ICAO’s (International Civil Aviation Organisation) Safety Oversight Manual, according to which any airline with a crash record should undergo all checks from scratch.
In other words, whether or not Helios operated under the name of ajet, the carrier should have been subjected to the scrutiny of civil aviation authorities.
“I therefore can’t understand why – and under what regulations – would the Republic of Cyprus be willing to take the risk of allowing Helios to fly under a different name, and this even before the crash investigation has been completed?”
The inquiry into the causes of the disaster, due out in early summer, is likely to find fault with all the involved agencies, including Civil Aviation and Helios.
Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2006