Indonesia to Close Airline Also-Rans

Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla said today that aberrant airlines would be given warnings, suspended or shut down following an audit - depending on their reported state of affairs. A government-sanctioned team of transport experts has called for a revamp of the aviation industry following a series of air accidents. The team was commissioned by the Government after an AdamAir 737 with 102 people on board disappeared on 1st January. It has concluded that safety standards had begun deteriorating since the deregulation of the aviation sector in the late 1990s. The Government has now been urged to shut down any and all air operators that ignore safety rules. Indonesian air travel has grown substantially since the liberalisation of the airline industry. Vying for business in a country of more than 17,000 islands, fierce competition has triggered price wars among low cost and minimum service airlines.

The Transport Safety Team is also tasked to come up with recommendations on improving safety on Indonesia's other transport networks including the nation's overstretched and tragedy-prone ferry system. These initiatives follow closely upon threats by the Transport Minister to bar import of airliners more than ten years old. Inquiries into the latest air accident, to a Garuda 737-400 in Yogyakarta, are now focusing on human error. That focus will inevitably narrow to look at pilot training and overall competencies. The conclusion is expected to be that most of Indonesia's airline incidents are not hardware related.