Indonesia air safety chief's vow on planes

Geoff Easdown, Herald Sun

November 02, 2007 12:00am

INDONESIA's head of air safety admitted yesterday not one of the country's 47 airlines qualified in an audit of safety standards.

Dr Budhi Suyitno, director-general of both transport and civil aviation, said most of the carriers came in at rating two, or below par, when judged on three levels of safety.

He said seven airlines, including low-cost carrier Adam Air, which owned the Boeing 737 jet that crashed in January killing 102 people, had been rated at the unsatisfactory grade of level three.

However he said Indonesian authorities were committed to fixing the country's disastrous aviation problems, which had caused European nations to ban Indonesian-registered planes.

Dr Suyitno is visiting Australia to address the Safe Skies aviation conference in Canberra.

He said the Garuda Airlines crash in March at Jogjakarta -- in which 21 people died, including five Australians -- was now a police matter.

However evidence that found the chief pilot at fault for ignoring warnings and landing the aircraft at an unsafe speed could not be used in any future criminal prosecution, Dr Suyitno said.

He told the Herald Sun yesterday he expected all of the country's airlines to reach the level one safety standard within 18 months.

"After getting all the information we realised that our level of safety was very, very low," he said.

"We are starting by giving education to our people on aviation safety levels.

"We have begun by classifying the airlines and making sure the people know what should and should not be done in complying with safety."

All airlines had now been audited, he said, and the seven on the lowest category of level three had been given three months to improve.

Dr Suyitno said after he was appointed to his post on March 13, he sought help in the US from retired US Air Force Maj-Gen Mark Rosenker.

The major-general censured him and the Indonesian Government for its failure to retrieve the black boxes from the wreck in Macassar Strait, he said.

The black boxes were finally recovered in August.

Details of the accident report would be released within the next few weeks, he said.