Helios Crash

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Home Truths

All -
Our Cypriot friends had excellent advice from the CAA on airline regulatory oversight prior to Helios. Sadly, they chose to ignore much of it.

Problem as I see it: The main airline in Cyprus, Cyprus Airways, has always been a very good airline from a safety point of view. (The airline was created by BEA and is run operationally like BA). Possibly because of this, the Cyprus Department of Civil Aviation took a pretty laid back attitude to airline safety. (Conversely, their attitude to aviation safety from a non airline perspective - aerodrome, air navigation etc., was pretty much ok. Indeed, let us not forget that the one of the worst mid-air disasters of all time occurred in Swiss controled airspace, not in ‘poor’ Cyprus).

Don’t forget that apart from CY, all the other aircraft flying in and out of the place were regulated by their home regulators. The vast majority of these aircraft were British, so they were policed by the CAA. No problems there. You also had Air France, Lufthansa, Olympic, Austrian, KLM etc. etc. - again all very well regulated by their home regulators. So the Cypriots smoked lots of cigarettes and continued not to worry.

Don’t forget that Hellas (NOT Helios - which confused people) and Cypriana were gov / CY controlled and operated to the same high standards of CY. Helios was the FIRST Cypriot deregulated airline.

So then....deregulation occurs. Now deregulation is fine PROVIDING you have very good regulatory oversight. When Helios popped up this firm regulatory oversight didn’t exist on the island. Moreover, many people flew on Helios / Flash Air thinking that European oversight would guarantee their safety. Most people thought that if an airline that wasn’t up to scratch it simply couldn’t operate in Europe. (Me included. And I work in the industry.) We all now know better, of course.

I know the little island very very well. This was an accident waiting to happen. There’s no point paying for and getting world class advice on airline regulation - as the Cypriots got from the CAA - and then ignoring it. Sadly, that’s what occurred. And without prejudicing the trial that’s about to occur, most commentators would agree that Helios did not run a tight ship (to put it diplomaticaly).

Again, I emphasise - this happens in rich and poor countries, Just look at the Swiss aviation safety record as a comparison. That does not excuse the lack of regulatory oversight of Helios. But there was very much ‘Don’t worry - airlines know what they are doing’ approach to things’.