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Report identifies 3 major risks of flying in Indonesia
Illegal trespassing by animals and people onto plane runways, a lack of advanced weather radar systems and poor air traffic management are three major issues faced by airplanes flying into Indonesian territory, a report has identified
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llegal trespassing by animals and people onto plane runways, a lack of advanced weather radar systems and poor air traffic management are three major issues faced by airplanes flying into Indonesian territory, a report has identified.
Published on Monday, the Wall Street Journal's (WSJ) latest interactive report identified three major problems in Indonesia's aviation infrastructure that put the safety of plane passengers at risk.
The first problem concerned the fact that many animals and people still wander onto runways when planes are taking off.
The report mentioned a plane accident in 2013 when a Lion Air jet struck two cows on a runway in Sulawesi, injuring two passengers.
Such accidents unfortunately do not only involve animals. In 2010, a training flight hit two locals riding a bike in Budiarto, Tangerang, killing the pair and the flight instructor.
The second risk was related to the lack of advanced technology to detect bad storms ahead of plane accidents, in addition to poor communication between flight operators and ground staff.
The report indicated that a lethal 2014 Air Asia crash which went down over the sea between Indonesia and Singapore during a tropical storm happened because the pilots and ground staff did not do a face-to-face briefing. Such briefings are required by many carriers to better prepare crew members on how to deal with storms.
The report also said that Indonesia lacked wind sheer detection systems, which could be used to detect sudden, dangerous changes in wind direction during a plane's final approach or takeoff. The report mentioned that 10 airports in Indonesia were scheduled to install such systems in the next five years.
The last major risk of flying in Indonesia concerned the poor management of air traffic flow, mainly due to a lack of human resources.
The report stated that air traffic congestion and a lack of staff had caused a Russian Sukhoi passenger jet to crash into a volcano outside Jakarta during a test flight in 2012, killing all 45 onboard.
The report is part of the WSJ's discussion on identifying five major risks of flying in Asia. The report stated that despite being the world's fasting-growing aviation market, airports infrastructure across the continent was still ill-equipped to handle the increasing traffic. (ika)(++++)
