WASHINGTON—Travelers have the right to expect the highest standards of safety when they travel on a U.S. airline. They should also be able to expect a similar level of safety when flying on a foreign airline under a code-sharing arrangement with an American carrier.

That’s the view of Rep. James L. Oberstar (Minn.), ranking Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Oberstar believes U.S. airlines must ensure that their international partners are providing a similar level of safety to passengers on code-sharing flights.

Oberstar today introduced legislation to address this issue. The Aviation Code-Share Safety Act of 1999 would require U.S. carriers to conduct safety audits of their foreign partners as a condition of any code-sharing arrangement.

"As relationships between domestic and foreign carriers continue to grow through code sharing, we need to take a hard look at whether safety has kept pace," Oberstar said. "Since 1994, the number of code-sharing alliances has more than doubled, from 61 to 163. A passenger who buys a ticket from a U.S. airline for a code-sharing flight (ticketed as a flight on the U.S. airline) has a right to expect that the entire flight will be operated under similar safety standards."

Oberstar cited as an example the recent decision by Delta Airlines to suspend its code-sharing relationship with Korean Air over safety issues.

"The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had no safety concerns with the arrangement because South Korea has a system for regulating safety that, on paper, appeared adequate," Oberstar said. "However, in this case—and possibly in far too many other cases—there appears to be little correlation between FAA’s assessment of the foreign regulatory system and the actual safety performance of a carrier."

Oberstar’s bill would require a U.S. airline seeking to enter into a code-sharing arrangement with a foreign carrier to conduct a comprehensive safety audit, including on-site inspections of the foreign airline’s operation. The audit must be conducted under a safety audit program approved by the FAA. Prior to receiving approval of a code-sharing arrangement from the Department of Transportation, the U.S. airline must certify to the FAA that the foreign carrier meets the standards set forth in its safety audit program. Once the code-sharing agreement is in place, the bill requires the U.S. airline to review the foreign carrier’s operations periodically to ensure continued compliance with the safety standards.

Finally, the bill directs the FAA to work with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to ensure that oversight of code-sharing agreements becomes part of any foreign aviation authority’s safety regulation framework.