The
country’s poor reputation for aviation safety goes back several years
 |
| AirAsia passengers line up to check in at the budget airline’s counter at Singapore’s Changi airport on Dec. 29, 2014. (EPA Photo/Francis R. Malasig) |
Jakarta.
The disappearance on Sunday of an Indonesian passenger jet with 162 people on
board has put the country’s aviation safety record back in the public glare,
even as the industry insists that standards have improved.
The
Indonesia AirAsia plane dropped off the radar over the Java Sea en route from
Surabaya to Singapore at 6:18 a.m. on Sunday, carrying 155 passengers and seven
crew members.
Malaysia-based
AirAsia and its regional subsidiaries, including the Indonesian unit in which
it holds a 49 percent stake, has never faced a major incident like this since
it began operations in 1996.
“The
incident is unexpected, considering that AirAsia’s reputation as a low-cost
carrier is perfect,” Arista Atmadjati, an aviation analyst and lecturer at
Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, told the Jakarta Globe on Monday.
“They
mostly are on time, have new planes, and are known to have a good track in
terms of engine maintenance schedule. This is really bad luck for AirAsia.”
Indonesia
AirAsia had until Sunday managed to avoid the safety incidents that routinely
dogged other low-cost carriers in Indonesia — in particular Lion Air — which
have pursued breakneck expansion, often at the expense of safety and
maintenance standards.
The last
major incident before Sunday’s disappearance of Flight QZ8501 was the
crash-landing of a Lion Air flight in the sea just before the runway at Bali’s
Ngurah Rai International Airport as it was coming in to land in April 2013. All
108 passengers on board survived, and none were seriously injured. It was Lion
Air’s seventh accident since 2002.
The most
recent deadly incident involving a large jet occurred in May 2012 when a
Russian-made Sukhoi Superjet 100 crashed into the side of a mountain in West
Java during a promotional flight, killing all 45 people on board. Voice
recordings recovered from the wreckage suggested the pilot was chatting with a
potential buyer in the cockpit prior to the crash.
The
country’s poor reputation for aviation safety goes back several years. In
September 2005, a flight from now-defunct Mandala Airlines killed 149 people
after the plane that took off from an airport in Medan, North Sumatra, crashed
into a densely populated residential area. It claimed the lives of 100 people
on board and 49 on the ground.
The local
aviation safety record hit a nadir in 2007 when the US Department of
Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration downgraded Indonesia’s safety
rating following a series of high-profile incidents — notably the disappearance
of Adam Air Flight DHI574, which crashed into the Makassar Strait on Jan. 1,
2007, killing all 102 people on board.
That same
year, the European Union banned all Indonesian airlines from flying in European
airspace in light of the incidents. The ban was only partially lifted in 2009.
But the
days of poor safety records is a thing of the past, says the Indonesian
National Air Carriers Association, or INACA.
“Nowadays
the safety aspects of all Indonesian airlines is much better than in previous
years,” INACA chairman Arif Wibowo, who is also the newly appointed president
director of flag carrier Garuda Indonesia, said on Monday.
Arif, who
previously headed Citilink, Garuda’s low-cost subsidiary, said that all
airlines were subjected to stringent systems audits to ensure their compliance
with safety standards before they could get a an air operation certificate,
required to operate commercial flights.
President
Joko Widodo said on Monday that he had asked Transportation Minister Ignasius
Jonan to perform a thorough evaluation of aviation safety procedures in
Indonesia.
“I have
ordered the transportation minister to recheck all procedures for all flights
to maximize” prevention of such incidents in future, Jokowi said at a press
conference in Jakarta on Monday.
He also
said he had ordered the meteorological agency, or BMKG, to do more to assist
airlines in anticipating patches of bad weather — something that Flight QZ8501
had requested permissions from air traffic control to fly over before contact
was lost.
The
president said he had asked authorities to cooperate with their counterparts
from Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Britain, who have all offered
technical assistance in the continuing search for the missing plane, believed
to have fallen in the Java Sea.
Ignasius
said the government would perform a review of Indonesia AirAsia’s business and
operation, especially with regard to safety standard compliance.
“In the
near term, we will review the operations and the business of [Indonesia]
AirAsia to ensure a better future performance, especially from the safety
aspect,” he said
He
previously said one of his missions in the Transportation Ministry was to
improve Indonesia’s aviation safety image in the eyes of the international
community.
With
additional reporting by Laila Ramdhini & Hari Gunarto
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