'More to aircraft safety than age'

Andi Haswidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, March 02, 2007

Maintenance and safety checks should remain the top priorities in the effort to prevent air accidents, despite the government's plan to limit the age of aircraft that can be bought or leased by local airlines, the country's aviation watchdog and local carriers say.

National Transportation Safety Commission (KNKT) chairman Setio Rahardjo said he understood why the government might be focusing on the age of aircraft as being the main cause of recent accidents.

However, attention to maintenance, safety control and human-factor issues was more important, he stressed.

"It's no use if a brand new aircraft is not maintained as required, or the skills needed to operate or fly it are lacking," he told The Jakarta Post by phone Thursday.

The government also needed to increase the level of monitoring to ensure that the country's airline operators complied with the relevant safety standards.

Transportation Minister Hatta Radjasa said Wednesday that the government planned to ban airlines from buying or leasing aircraft of more than 10 years old as part of an apparently newfound concern for safety following a series of dramatic, often fatal, incidents.

The government last week grounded seven of Adam Air's Boeing 737-300 aircraft, a third of its fleet, after the fuselage of one of its jets cracked upon landing in Surabaya on Feb. 21. On Jan. 1, a 17-year-old Adam Air plane, carrying 102 people, disappeared off the coast of Sulawesi.

The Jan. 1 Adam Air disappearance is Indonesia's worst air disaster since Sept. 5, 2005, when a 24-year-old Mandala Airlines aircraft crashed into a residential area in Medan, North Sumatra province, killing 149 people.

Besides accidents involving aircraft, Indonesia has also suffered a spate of shipping accidents over the last two months.

Hatta, who is coming under pressure to resign following the accidents, did not elaborate on how the proposed restrictions on aircraft age would work.

But the ministry's director of airworthiness certification, Yurlis Hasibuan, said the proposed regulation would only affect the age of aircraft to be bought or leased by operators, reducing this to a maximum of 10 years old from the current 20. However, the maximum age of aircraft that could be operated would remain 35 years.

Speaking separately to the Post, the representatives of a number of airlines said they supported the government's proposal to reduce the age of aircraft, but shared the view that the operation of new aircraft alone would not guarantee safety if proper safety control and reliable human resources were lacking.

"The aviation industry is heavily regulated by nature. A technician has to be licensed, the cabin crew must receive special training, and pilots have to undergo proficiency checks. The government has to make sure that every airline complies with the applicable standards as they are updated and improved. These are very important for improving safety," explained Garuda Indonesia spokesman Pudjo Broto.

Meanwhile, Adam Air president director Adam Suherman told the Post that he would support any proposal to restrict the age of aircraft.

However, Adam once again stressed that the age of an aircraft was not the sole factor involved in ensuring safety. He argued that both theoretically and empirically, planes that were older than 10 years and less than 25 years old could still be operated safely as long as maintenance standards were adhered to.