U.S. to Propose Plan for Air Carriers to Check Safety of Foreign Partners

WASHINGTON — A federal government proposal to have all U.S. airlines check foreign partner airlines for safety is due to be announced today by Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater.

Airline industry sources said the proposal is virtually identical to a voluntary program that the six U.S. carriers agreed to earlier this year with the Defense Department. That plan was designed to assure the Pentagon that foreign partners in various airline alliances were safe for military personnel.

Slater has scheduled a news conference today in Chicago to announce the safety plan as part of a U.S.-sponsored conference on the future of international aviation.

Under the increasingly common practice of code-sharing, in which airlines sell tickets on one another’s flights using their own identifying code, a ticket written by a U.S. carrier might involve a flight on a foreign airline.

Although the Federal Aviation Administration grades the quality of foreign aviation regulators’ oversight, it does not directly review foreign carriers.

Under the Pentagon plan, U.S. airlines would review the accident and incident rates of their foreign partners during the last four years. They would also consider factors such as the financial condition of the foreign carrier, labor problems and the age of the carrier’s planes.

One airline official said the principal difference in the new proposal is that it would be compulsory for all U.S. carriers.

The Pentagon program was launched in August by AMR Corp.’s American Airlines, Continental Airlines Inc., Delta Air Lines, Northwest Airlines, Trans World Airlines Inc. and UAL Corp.’s United Airlines.

The Defense Department began auditing U.S. carriers after a chartered DC-8 jet crashed in Gander, Newfoundland, in 1995, killing 248 soldiers returning from Middle East peacekeeping duties.