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ndonesia’s failure to secure a seat on the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) council should serve as a wake-up call for the government to revamp the country’s notoriously poor aviation infrastructure, experts say.

Indonesia only won the support of 96 out of 191 member countries during the ICAO meeting to select new 36 council members held in Montreal, Canada, on Oct. 4.

Singapore, on the other hand, managed to get reelected for another term of three years, maintaining control over the regional airspace, including the aerial territory of Indonesia’s Riau and Riau Islands provinces.

Aviation analyst Chappy Hakim said the lack of support from ICAO members for Indonesia was a result of, among other things, the widespread concerns over the country’s poor safety record and infrastructure quality.

“It was pointless for Indonesia to woo countries to vote for it in the selection, while at the same time being unable to display good aviation quality,” Chappy told The Jakarta Post on Thursday. “ICAO members would not think twice about supporting Indonesia assuming council membership if the country had good aviation oversight,” he added.

Following the failure to achieve ICAO council membership, Indonesia had to improve its aviation system, Chappy said, and the country should seek to improve its aviation based on a 2007 ICAO audit.

ICAO audits are widely used by developed countries when imposing bans on airlines from countries with poor air safety oversight. Its audit in 2007 revealed 121 flaws in the Indonesian system.

The ICAO’s 2007 audit of Indonesia aviation led the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Commission to impose flight bans on Indonesian airlines, although some airlines have since been exempted from the bans.

The most recent major aviation accident in the country was the AirAsia flight QZ8501 crash in December 2014, which killed all 162 people on board. The flight was bound for Singapore from Surabaya, East Java.

The failure to achieve ICAO council membership has also cast a shadow over Indonesia’s bid to control its air sovereignty, said Gadjah Mada University (UGM) aviation expert Arista Atmadjati.

A position on the ICAO council would have given Indonesia “a better lobbying position”, Arista said, with the country seeking to take over the flight information region [FIR] above Riau and Riau Islands provinces from Singapore.

Singapore has controlled the airspace above the two provinces since 1946 and has stated it will hand over the control to Indonesia, which has been trying to take it over since 1993, when the ICAO gives the go-ahead.

Hang Nadim International Airport general manager Suwarso said on Wednesday that following Indonesia’s failure to achieve ICAO council membership, the plan to take over the FIR above the two provinces could not be implemented.

“It’s unlikely we’ll take over the FIR above Riau and Riau Islands, as it can only be done if Indonesia becomes an ICAO council member,” Suwarso said.

There are two FIR territories in Indonesia’s skies: FIR 1, controlled by Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Cengkareng, Banten, and FIR 2, which is under the management of Sultan Hasanuddin International Airport in Makassar, South Sulawesi.

Arista said that many international flights opted to use flight information and alerting services from the Singaporean aviation authority. “The service in FIR 1 is considered poor by many flights bound for Singapore, such as officials’ poor English and outdated air traffic control [ATC] technology,” Arista said.

Separately, the Transportation Ministry said in a statement that it would try again in the future to get ICAO council membership. The failure in Montreal had made the country more determined to improve its civil aviation management, the statement read.