Following bilateral talks, authorities in the Comoros have relented in their bid to bar carriers from the nearby French Indian Ocean territories of Mayotte and La Réunion following the resolution of a bilateral air services dispute with France.
The Journal de Mayotte newspaper reports the dispute stemmed from the French Directorate General of Civil Aviation's (DGCA) unwillingness to grant Comorian carrier Int'Air Îles (Anjouan) permission to serve Dzaoudzi, Mayotte, and St. Pierre de la Réunion, despite it having based its only A320-200 out of Dzaoudzi earlier this month.
Although Paris eventually relented and allowed passengers to board in Dzaoudzi, they refused to do the same in Reunion citing security concerns about Moroni International Airport, which serves the Comorian capital. The French authorities intend to send a team to assess the security situation at Moroni Airport in January 2017 following which they will respond to Int'Air Iles' route authority request.
Given the delay, the Vice-President in charge of the Comorian Ministry of Transport, Abdallah Saïd Sarouma, moved to ban Air Austral (UU, St. Denis de la Réunion) and its EWA Air (ZD, Dzaoudzi) unit from serving the Comoros with effect from December 27, 2016.
The paper reports that with the impending loss of access to an important market, Comorian and French officials convened a series of expedited talks over Christmas leading to the lifting of the ban.
The terms for the upliftment were not revealed.
