Frankfurt  - Passengers are advised to only book direct flights when travelling to regions with low plane safety standards. Some airlines use new or well maintained planes to fly to Europe and North America to avoid being put on safety blacklists such as one maintained by the European Union.

However, planes that fly passengers to the airline's home country can be either very old or less well serviced. That is sometimes the case with planes used for the connecting leg of the homeward bound journey. Airlines follow this strategy with the aim of cutting costs, says Joerg Handwerg, spokesman for Germany's airline pilots' association, Vereinigung Cockpit.

On June 30 an Airbus A310 belonging to a Yemen-based airline, Yemenia, crashed into the sea off the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean with 153 people on board. There was only one survivor. The cause of the crash is still unknown but the almost 20-year-old plane had come to the attention of engineers who identified faults during an inspection in France two years ago. The plane began its journey in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, with some passengers on board who had started their journey on a flight from Paris that had travelled via Marseilles.

Handwerg says it is common for airlines in poor regions such as Africa, parts of Asia and South America to follow less stringent safety standards. Those airlines follow European and US safety standards on planes that fly to those two regions, but when it comes to planes that fly on the homeward stretch of the journey, older planes are often used.

Passengers who want to avoid exposing themselves to that risk should only fly on direct routes from Europe or North America. "You should check in advance if you need to take a connecting flight," says Handwerg.

It is also a good idea to inform yourself about the safety record of the airline you plan travelling with. That, however, is not as easy as it could be as apart from the EU's blacklist of airlines that cannot fly to Europe due to safety concerns, there is no official source of information about airline safety. (dpa)