Bill Guerin, Jakarta – Despite extensive international-standard safety regulations governing Indonesia's air traffic sector, last week's disaster was the third major air tragedy in less than a year. There have been 14 air accidents so far this year and more than two dozen since early 2004.
Seconds into a two-hour and 15 minute scheduled flight from Medan's Polonia airport to Jakarta, a 24-year-old Boeing 737-230 operated by Mandala Airlines crashed in a densely populated residential area 500 meters beyond the runway. With more than 10 tons of fuel on board the gross weight on impact would have been about 56 tons. In the ensuing inferno, 150 people were killed – 103 on board and 47 on the ground – while 15 passengers in the tail section survived.
Compensation in this instance does not even begin to touch the lower limits of a major Western carrier's payouts. Payment for death or disability is only about $5,000 and for treatment to injuries payments will be up to $2,500.
The crash has focused to an unprecedented level public attention, and that of authorities, on air safety. Indonesia is rated Category 1 (meeting International Civil Aviation Organization standards) in the US Federal Aviation Administration's International Aviation Safety Assessment Program (IASA). These standards imply monitoring and control of airline operations, aircraft maintenance, pilot training and licensing, and minimum required equipment on aircraft.
The problem may be in enforcement of those regulations and the accompanying checks and tests, in a culture where corruption, to a lesser or greater degree, is the norm where regulations of any kind are involved.
"It's how to implement these regulations without officials who can be bribed. This is what can endanger safety," Transport minister Hatta Radjasa told a local radio station after emerging from a special parliamentary hearing with the House of Representatives Commission V dealing with transport and communications.
Legislators and local commentators have questioned safety and maintenance standards for Indonesia's extensive fleets of aging jets, asking whether carriers were prioritizing safety above all else in the current difficult conditions in a sector badly hit by rocketing fuel costs and a protracted ticketing price war. The crowded and competitive market has forced most carriers to cut costs and fares to avoid bankruptcy.
"What we worry about most is that the price competition could lead to the companies neglecting safety aspects," said Sofyan Mile, head of the commission.
Though some factions in parliament are even calling for all 737-200 series aircraft to be banned, wiser counsel has prevailed for the time being, with the government initiating random ramp inspections and inspections of aircraft in maintenance hangars.
"Most local carriers operate this type of aircraft [Boeing 737-300] and they have the highest accident rates, but we will not ground all of the planes," Radjasa said.
This is a sensible approach, given that most aircraft crashes have proven to be related to pilot error, faulty maintenance, air traffic control errors or extremely bad weather conditions. On the rare occasions a crash, or even a reported incident, is proven to be due to faulty design, a quick change in the design follows, even preceded by a grounding of the global fleet until the fault has been remedied – if it has the potential to bring down more of the aircraft type.
The aircraft and its owners
The doomed aircraft was nearly 25 years old. It's first livery after leaving the Boeing factory was as Lufthansa D-ABHK in 1981. In 1994 it changed ownership twice, first as Tunisair TF-ABY, then finally as Mandala Airlines PK-RIM. It had flown more than 50,000 hours and had undergone a full service in June.
Mandala Airlines was founded in April 1969 and is 90% owned by the Indonesian Army's Strategic Reserve Command (Kostrad). Before the crash it had a fleet of 15 Boeings – 13 Boeing 737-200s, two Boeing 737-400s and a Boeing 727 – and earlier this year ordered another five. The airline serves 16 domestic routes and employs about 1,300 people.
Most reports describe the carrier as a "budget" airline but as Nicholas Ionides, Asian editor for Flight International Magazine points out, it is not a low-cost carrier. "It's an airline that's been around for a long time, and just because it's not a Singapore Airlines or a Cathay Pacific full-service, premium airline, it shouldn't be classified in the same category as other true low-cost airlines, like Air Asia," he said.
Nonetheless, the carrier's commissioner and current Kostrad chief Major General Hadi Waluyo said the company had been in financial difficulties during the past two years, though claiming the downturn had nothing to with the crash. All Mandala's planes were in good condition and the group was planning a financial recovery package that would make the airline more competitive, he said.
Cultural questions
Some raise the question of whether the real danger to passenger safety is the frequently lax attitudes toward safety in a country prone to frequent major accidents on road, rail and in the air. David Learmount, a leading expert on air safety, points out that the less-developed countries have a much-less-strong safety culture, in every way, than those in the developed West.
Commenting on the recent series of six fatal air crashes worldwide, he said that when this is factored in to air transport, it means that flying on airlines other than the "majors" is simply not as safe. "This is because countries which are more modern, politically and economically, have the luxury of a safety culture, which applies to everything, such as road safety, and not just aviation," he said.
The official handle
Investigators say they have discovered signs of engine problems but that further analysis is needed to determine the reason for the crash. The National Transportation Safety Committee, NTSC, is responsible for the probe. As expected, it has refused to speculate on the cause of the disaster. Its public comments so far include a denial that terrorism played a part in the crash and that the overcast weather was unlikely to have been a factor. NTSC also says there were no clues in the conversations between air traffic control and the crew of the doomed airliner.
Tests are to be conducted on the fuel lines and fuel quality. A compressor deformation has been noted and is being investigated further. "We found that the fan blade engine was in a damaged condition. We also found that the three screw-jack actuators came loose from a flap and the wing," said Setio Raharjo, who heads a team of NTSC investigators. He appealed to those who have taken pieces of the aircraft to return them to enable the investigation to be conclusive.
A team of six investigators from the US National Safety Transportation Board (NSTB) is also helping with the investigation. Both black boxes have been recovered and will eventually be sent to the US for analysis.
Speculation
The scenes of sheer horror and grief televised to the nation for almost three days, before those bodies that could not be identified were buried in a mass grave, sparked intensive speculation in the mainstream media. Excess weight? The age of the ill-fated plane? Unreliable engines due to poor maintenance by the airline? One report said flight records showed the aircraft took off with only three kilograms of allowable weight to spare but NTSC has dismissed this.
One pilot, writing to a professional mailing list, though requesting anonymity, conjured up the horror of how the final seconds in the cockpit would have panned out if the aircraft was indeed overweight. "You lost an engine past V1... decide to continue, go for the single-engine climb speed... you're heavier than you think... will you reach that speed? If you do, then you want to enter the single-engine climb, and your altitude doesn't increase... you pull again... the next thing you know, you're behind the power curve; speed begins to drop despite fire walling the remaining engine... then the stick shaker comes on... and...."
Older aircraft can be operated safely as long as they are adequately maintained. There are about 4,200 Boeing 737 of all series still in service across the world. Local sources suggest carriers commonly "dumb down" aircraft by disabling the auto brakes and auto throttle to maintain higher utility rates and low turnaround times. This is not a safety issue, per se, but means more brake and engine changes than normal are needed. Falling yields and the soaring fuel price, the argument goes, may have led to even more drastic cost-cutting measures.
Putra Jaya, one legislator from Commission V, said: "If fuel prices go up, the plane ticket prices should also go up. If they do not, some corners must be cut. Of course, it won't be food but it will be service and maintenance costs."
Australian analyst Gerard Frawley, editor of the Australian Aviation magazine, sums up, "Indonesia has had more than its fair share of crashes over the past decade, considering that its aviation industry is not unusually large, although we have to be careful drawing conclusions because a country can easily have a run of bad luck."
As if to reinforce his words, a Garuda Indonesia aircraft made an emergency landing at Pekan Baru, Riau the day after the Medan disaster. It was en route to Medan from Jakarta. A Mandala aircraft also returned on Tuesday to Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport after 10 minutes in the air due to problems with landing gear warning lamps.
A Batavia Air Boeing 737-200 en route to Medan from Jakarta made an emergency stop on Thursday at Palembang, and a light aircraft belonging to Dirgantara Air Service crashed in Kalimantan province on Friday. A Lion Air flight, with 152 passengers and seven crew members on board, was diverted to another airport on Saturday due to heavy rain.
Grounded
By accident or design all this was enough for the government. By the end of the week four 737-200s in different liveries were temporarily grounded following special checks initiated by the Transport Ministry. Two were grounded on Friday night after inspectors carried out ramp checks on the planes at Soekarno-Hatta Airport. Two others were grounded after the minister made a sudden visit to the airport on Saturday afternoon. Among the problems discovered was a damaged front landing wheel on one of the aircraft, according to Kompas newspaper. Transport Minister Radjasa changed tack on his earlier comments, and was quoted as saying the government was now considering suspending the issuance of permits for 737-200s because of the age of the aircraft type.
Ramp checks will be implemented every day at this airport, compared with the previous quarterly checks. But oddly enough, director general of Air Transport Mohammad Iksan Tatang was quoted as saying ramp checks had nothing to do with flight safety but with service. He did say, however, "We are going to audit airlines' financial reports and if they touch up maintenance issues, we will cancel their routes."
Indonesia is the largest archipelago in the world. With 17,000 islands and more than 235 million people, air, sea and land transport plays a vital role in the country. It straddles the equator over a distance of some 3,200 miles and has nearly 450 airports with profound differences in navigational and landing aids, weather conditions and air traffic density.
Polonia airport, for example, is the main entry point for relief teams and supplies heading to tsunami-affected areas of Aceh province. The airport's usual 20 planes per day soared to more than 300 daily in early January and it still controls a very busy and often crowded sector of Indonesian airspace.
On September 26, 1997 a Garuda Indonesia Airbus A300 on final approach to Medan on a flight from Jakarta came down in a mountainous area 30 kilometers from the airport. Extensive smoke and haze from numerous forest fires caused reduced visibility in the area. All 12 crew members and 222 passengers were killed. Polonia's 3000-meter runway leads to residential areas and highrise buildings. The government plans to build a new airport at Kualanamu, 34 kilometers from downtown Medan, but this is only on the drawing board.
Should a fault attributed to Mandala rather than to Boeing prove to have been the main contributing factor of last week's Medan disaster, it may take years to build up the confidence of the flying public that it is once again safe, or as safe as elsewhere, to take to the skies in Indonesia. As an editorial in the influential Media Indonesia, owned by the same group that owns Metro TV, which provided most of the on-the-spot televised coverage, warned, "In Indonesia it has become a common matter that passengers, including safety, are being sacrificed."
[Bill Guerin, a Jakarta correspondent for Asia Times Online since 2000, has worked in Indonesia for 20 years as a journalist. He has been published by the BBC on East Timor and specializes in business/economic and political analysis in Indonesia.]