Flying Indonesia-style A 'deadly Combination'

The Age

Friday March 9, 2007

Stephen Moynihan, transport reporter

INDONESIA suffers a "deadly combination" of inefficient airline operators, poor safety regulations and bad weather, a senior Australian aviation figure says.

More than 1500 people have been killed in crashes involving Indonesian airlines since 1967 and the source said Garuda had suffered from inadequate safety for years.

"There's no doubt that they're not very well run, and that goes to maintenance and other matters," the source said. "It's a deadly combination of a relatively inefficient operator, a poor core regulator and a more difficult flying environment."

Yesterday, a Garuda spokesman stood by the company's maintenance and safety procedures. The airline has its own maintenance company, the Jakarta-based GMF Aero Asia, which maintains most of the Garuda fleet while filling contracts for a dozen local and regional airlines.

The company carries out monthly and quarterly overnight maintenance checks. Garuda also outsources checks to overseas maintenance firms, some believed to be based in China. However, the company is accredited to complete major overhauls of some aircraft types.

Garuda - which cut flights to Europe in 2003 due to the US invasion of Iraq - is not on a controversial list drawn up by the European Union of banned airlines.

The Garuda spokesman said the airline was planning to reintroduce flights to Europe later this year.

The airline is struggling to pay off debt and the Indonesian Government has mooted plans to privatisethe airline. It has faced stiff competition from a host of new low-cost airlines, many of whom have been involved in a string of fatal crashes and safety scares.

In January 2002, the US National Transport Safety Bureau investigated the crash of a Garuda 737 while trying to land at Yogyakarta in the middle of a thunderstorm. The plane missed the airport and landed in a river, killing a flight attendant.

The bureau report said both pilots failed to follow the aircraft's normal operating procedures. It also said the pilots ignored advice to fly around the thunderstorm. Instead, the pilots' attempted approach "flew a course that made entering into the storm unavoidable".

A spokesman for the Civil Aviation Safety Authority said it was able to conduct on-the-spot safety checks on all foreign planes flying into Australia. Garuda flies to Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Darwin. The airline spokesman said there was nothing to suggest its fleet was unsafe to fly.

© 2007 The Age

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