Laila Ramdhini, Hari Gunarto & Tabita Diela, 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 people on board survived, and there were no serious injuries. 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.