Syrian Air is flying in dangerous territory

(Fortune Magazine) -- Is the Bush administration toying with aviation safety to pursue its political goals in the Middle East?

That's what the chairman of Syria's national airline and other experts say is the effect of extensive delays by Washington in issuing export licenses to Syrian Air for U.S.-manufactured aviation-security items - even though those items are exempt from a three-year-old export ban.

"Since the export ban has been in place, the U.S. has begun to delay the export-license process," Syrian Air chairman Nachaat Numir told Fortune in a recent interview in Damascus. "In the past the normal export-license application process took one month, maximum. Now it takes several months, even a year."

In addition to radar, navigation and communication equipment for the airline's Boeing (Charts, Fortune 500) planes made by Honeywell (Charts, Fortune 500) and Avionics Instruments, the list of held-up parts includes engine fire extinguishers manufactured by Kidde Aerospace & Defense, a North Carolina subsidiary of United Technologies (Charts, Fortune 500). "Those are all critical equipment pieces for the safety of civilian aircraft," says Jack Milavic, a retired Federal Aviation Administration safety inspector. "Withholding them is endangering the lives of innocent civilians."

While Numir stressed that the government-owned airline was taking all necessary steps to maintain high safety standards, he admitted that his aircraft are now forced to fly twice as many hours to compensate for grounded planes.

Ahmed Salkini, a spokesman at the Syrian Embassy in Washington, D.C., says the embassy inquired last November about several pending licenses "but never got conclusive answers." Additional inquiries were made, he says. "This is disappointing, because we are talking about passenger safety and about items exempted from U.S. sanctions."

Syrian Air has been forced to halt routes, ground aircraft, continue flying aging planes and abandon plans to acquire new ones from Airbus when the European manufacturer concluded that obtaining export licenses for U.S.-made components for its planes would prove too cumbersome.

Export licenses are granted by the Commerce Department after an interagency review that includes the State Department. David Foley, a spokesman for the State Department, denies there have been delays and says the process has been "consistent with the U.S. government's commitment to promote international safety-of-flight standards and protect innocent civilians, including the citizens of Syria."

One item held up for nine months was a ground-proximity warning system made by Honeywell, which helps pilots recognize high-rise buildings during landings. The International Civil Aviation Authority made the equipment mandatory at U.S. request after the Sept. 11 attacks. Honeywell submitted an application for an export license in July 2006 and confirms that it was not granted until April. The delay forced Syrian Air to stop flying its older Boeing 747s to France, Britain and Germany for a time, because those countries require that the system be installed.

A similar controversy arose in 2005 after a series of crashes in Iran prompted an independent report to the International Civil Aviation Authority supporting Iran's claims that U.S. refusal to export spare parts was jeopardizing air safety. Last October, following a safety warning by the Federal Aviation Administration, the Bush administration approved an expedited sale of General Electric (Charts, Fortune 500) parts to Iran Air.