DAKAR, Senegal – The pilot pressed a flask-sized bottle of vodka to his lips and swallowed deeply before piloting his geriatric aircraft down a jungle runway in eastern Congo.

The Antonov, flying valuable tin ore and two passengers out of the war-battered region, made the trip safely that day. But many don’t. Citing safety concerns the European Union banned 92 airlines Wednesday from its airspace. Most of the airlines are from Africa, where planes are six times likelier to crash than elsewhere and travelers swap tales of crises averted.

In announcing the ban on virtually all aircraft overseen by civil aviation authorities in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Equatorial Guinea, Swaziland and Congo from landing at European airports, EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot labeled many of the planes “flying coffins.”

Wednesday’s ban and earlier similar orders rankle many Africans. They point out that most banned airlines – like Thom’s Airways from Congo – no longer operate and never fly to Europe, and Africans have little choice but to use them to hop around the world’s poorest continent.

The deputy director of the civil aviation in Sierra Leone, which had 13 airlines banned, said his country had not had a safety audit by the main aviation-industry oversight group since the end of the country’s brutal 1989-2002 civil war.

Still, “every state has sovereignty over its airspace,” Badara Allieu Tarrawallie said.

The troubles in African nations are the same stymieing its aviation industry: poverty, conflict and poor governance. With little oversight, safety audits go undone and small problems are left unattended.

In Nigeria late last year, two planes flying domestic routes crashed within seven weeks of each other, killing 224 people, including dozens of schoolchildren heading home for Christmas holidays. The causes of those crashes have not been determined, but Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has referred to an intelligence report detailing safety problems involving Nigerian airlines, including planes experiencing landing gear trouble.

In December, Obasanjo blamed corruption for some of the troubles in his country’s aviation industry and called in international experts for a safety review.

A continentwide trend of economic liberalization may be fueling fast passenger growth as former state-owned airlines go private – even as poor governments fail to adapt and oversee the growth.