Indonesia needs to do more to improve aviation safety, say experts

In the history of Indonesia's aviation industry, Jakarta has never developed its own capability to fully investigate air accidents on its territory. However, that changed three years ago with a modest laboratory.

Indonesia took a major step in air accident investigation by setting up its own flight recorder laboratory. It now has the capabilities to retrieve, read and analyse flight data from what is commonly known as the "black box".

The Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) sent a handful of technicians overseas for training. Now, it has the expertise to retrieve flight data from all types of aircraft operating in Indonesia.

Andreas RH, a flight recorder technician, said: "We can now handle data from all types of aircraft operating in Indonesia. There's no need to send information overseas like before."

Fortunately though, Andreas has fewer black boxes to analyse this year, compared to last year.

In 2011, there were 32 air accidents. In 2012, that figure fell to 27.

It is a significant improvement, especially since the number of flights jumped last year. The rate of aviation accidents now stands at 1.43 per 100,000 flight hours.

Tatang Kurniadi, chairman of Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee, said: "For example, in 2007, our total flight time nationally was around 500,000 hours. Now it is more than 1.8 million hours. So if we compare the rate of accidents, it has dropped dramatically."

Still, Mr Tatang points out that the number of accidents remains at an average of 23 annually. He attributes this to a combination of factors.

He said: "It's a combination of new airports, new aircraft and new pilots flying the routes. These need attention."

Chappy Hakim, a former air marshall who chaired the special task force in 2007 on Indonesia's aviation safety, said business interests are compromising safety standards.

Mr Chappy said: "There are runways with restrictions. There are numerous reasons why a Boeing 737 cannot be fully-loaded or carry full capacity. It means there are restrictions. You can operate but with restrictions. But who are monitoring the restrictions?"

Indonesia has made tangible progress in the last five years to improve the standards of its aviation industry. That has led the European Union to lift its ban on a number of Indonesian airlines, including the national carrier Garuda.

However, there is still a lot of work to be done before Indonesia can reach international standards of safety.

Mr Chappy added: "We have progressed in many aspects but we have not yet improved on all the findings that ICAO reported in 2007. Up until this year, I don't think we will be able to move up from category two to category one."

Indonesia will need to hurry to get its aviation sector ready to meet the challenges of 2015 -- that is when the ASEAN open skies agreement will be implemented, which will see even more flights in and out of the country.

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Open skies agreement in 2015, will Indonesia be ready for it? This is a tough call to make.