Airline News
Clark calls for intelligence sharing reform after MH17
September 30th 2014
Emirates Airline (EK) president and chief executive officer Tim Clark continues urging his competitors and regulatory bodies in the industry to be more transparent in sharing information following the tragic shooting down of Malaysian Airline System Bhd. (MAS) flight MH17 on July 17. Read More »
In his speech at World Routes in Chicago, Clark delivered a stern message to IATA and ICAO, saying much more could be done to prevent future disasters.
Clark was one of the first major figures in the industry to step forward after MH17 to galvanise the industry into action.
“Something needs to be done and must be done, with timelines attached to it,” the EK boss had said as early as July 20.
Clark said some airlines had better access to information than others, based on their respective national governments’ ability, or political clout, to obtain up-to-date information.
“This isn’t a blame game. It is clear to me that airlines of some states that are better equipped in the intelligence-gathering process know a lot more than they are prepared to say, for reasons of disclosure etc. But the fact is that the information is probably there,” he added.
“If we cannot trust the notion that the state will determine safety of operation over its territory then it passes to the airline community, because who else is going to do it – ICAO? They will say ‘no, we mandate the states to do it’,” he continued.
Clark believes the information about ground-to-air missile launchers having been ferried into Ukraine was available to intelligence agencies for some time before the shootdown of MH17, though it was not communicated to some nations and their respective carriers.
He went on to say that there was “a high degree of coalescence from certain quarters. I said to Tony [Tyler] ‘you need to set up an information clearing house where all of us that are in the know of some kind can feed information, and then IATA or somebody can feed this out to airlines’.”
ICAO has set up a ‘Task Force on Risks to Civil Aviation Arising from Conflict Zones’ and said it would publish a preliminary report by October.
