Singapore, March 13 – The International Air Transport Association (IATA) does not expect a reduction in the growth of passenger traffic for Malaysia Airlines (MAS) following missing Flight MH370 incident.
IATA’s Director General and Chief Executive Officer, Tony Tyler said, IATA did not expect that.
“It is important to note that air travel remains an extremely safe industry.
“Everybody works together with high priority to ensure safety.
“As far as the MAS is concerned, it has a good safety record. It has a fatal accident nearly 20 years ago, involving a Fokker 50,” he said in question-and-answer session via teleconferencing from Geneva.
Earlier, Tyler was addressing a media briefing to announce IATA’s latest industry outlook for March.
Tyler said the national carrier has its IATA Operational Safety Audit registered in 2006, the benchmark for global safety management in airlines.
According to him, “this incident is very very rare and when it happened it is absolute tragedy for all concerned.”
“I think the confidence in the operating integrity of MAS should not be prejudiced, we should not draw any conclusion at all until we have been able to identify the cause of this tragedy,” he said.
MAS Flight MH370, carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew, went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing about an hour after taking-off from the KL International Airport in Sepang at 12.41am Saturday.
It should have landed in Beijing at 6.30am.
-Bernama
