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Editorial: Our air safety watchdog
The European Union's recent decision to extend its blanket ban on Indonesian airlines from flying to the region put in great doubts the integrity and technical competence of our air safety watchdog
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The European Union's recent decision to extend its blanket ban on Indonesian airlines from flying to the region put in great doubts the integrity and technical competence of our air safety watchdog.
There must have been many things wrong with our civil aviation safety oversight because the EU ban, first imposed in July 2007, was extended even after the air safety certification directorate upgraded the safety standards of our national flight carrier, Garuda Indonesia.
The EU implicitly acknowledged that its greatest concern was no longer limited to the safety of individual airlines, but rather on the competence of the civil aviation regulatory body, especially its air safety certification directorate, which is in charge of issuing pilot licenses, aircraft operation certificates for new airlines and safety approvals.
It is a shame that our air safety standard is ranked equally low as the airlines of Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Swaziland and Kyrgyz Republic, which are also prohibited from European air space.
The bill on air transportation currently under deliberations in parliament offers an opportunity to wholly reform our air safety watchdog into an independent agency.
Air safety administration and certification isn't actually the only important reforms proposed by the draft legislation. Equally vital to the civil aviation sector are measures to further liberalize the airline industry and to open airport management, currently monopolized by state companies, to private investors.
But the issue of the air safety watchdog has gained much more attention due to the series of airline crashes, fatal accidents and scares over the past three years.
The Transportation Ministry is certainly opposed to such a drastic change because within the bureaucratic scheme of things, our country is internationally notorious for its utterly corrupt government, and licensing authority and certification could become a "gold mine" for corrupt officials.
But we urge the lawmakers to simply ignore whatever arguments deployed by the Transportation Ministry, notably the civil aviation directorate general, to retain its authority over the enforcement of air safety standards.
We share the views of several members of the House of Representatives that deeply rooted in the issues over our air safety standards are the integrity and technical competence of the air safety certification directorate.
The results of investigations into the string of airplane accidents over the past three years revealed great failings in maintenance, operating, certification and administrative standards.
The United States Federal Aviation Administration also downgraded our air safety watchdog last year, revealing more evidence of its acute lack of technical competence in enforcing minimum international standards.
Diplomatic approaches are futile in lifting our country from the EU blacklist or the watch list of other countries like the United States. Concerted efforts by individual airlines to improve safety standards, though equally crucial, are not enough either to improve the international perception of our poor air safety standards.
The international aviation safety assessment program of the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) focuses on a country's ability, not the individual air carrier, to adhere to international standards and recommended practices for aircraft operations and maintenance as established by the United Nation's technical agency for aviation, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
Certainly airline companies, which should be fed up with dealing the high venality within the low-paid officials of the air safety certification directorate, will welcome such a drastic change.
As an independent body, the air safety watchdog could be more autonomous with regards to budgeting and staffing and would be less vulnerable to intervention by corrupt officials and other vested-interest groups. But this is not sufficient
The National Transportation Safety Committee, which investigates airline crashes, should also be separated from the Transportation Ministry, making it an independent body that reports directly to the President.
