News Backgrounder
AirAsia crash prompts regional regulatory review
February 1st 2015
The crash of Indonesia AirAsia flight QZ8501 on December 28, the third accident involving Southeast Asian carriers in nine months, dealt another body blow to the air safety reputation of the region’s airlines. Read More »
And like the bizarre disappearance of Malaysia Airlines’ MH370 and the murderous shooting down of MH17, the accident has raised serious questions about the region’s safety systems and government regulatory oversight beyond the airlines involved.
It will be several months before the report on the Indonesia AirAsia A320 crash into the Java Sea, which claimed the lives of 162 passengers and crew, will be completed. But early disclosure of the data has made one fact clear: an extraordinary weather event was a major contributing factor to the accident.
 |
| Lion Air, Indonesia’s largest airline, was found to have committed 35 violations of flight permits |
Information from the flight data recorder revealed the single aisle jet suddenly climbed at least five times its capability, at some 6,000 feet per minute. Its rate of ascent far exceeded the normal limit of 1,000 feet per minute at the 30,000 feet plus height at which it was flying.
Pilots of A320s have said there is only one explanation for such an extraordinary ascent: the aircraft must have been trapped in a massive updraft in a severe thunderstorm that situation led it to stall and then spiral into a fatal plunge into the sea.
Accident safety experts are asking did the crew of the Indonesia AirAsia airliner contribute in some way to the aircraft’s loss by mishandling the situation? Or were they totally incapable of doing anything about it?
They also want to establish why the aircraft was in the centre of such a severe storm cell. It is known the pilots were aware of storm activity - common in the region at that time of year – and requested clearance from air traffic control to climb to a higher altitude to avoid it. That request was met by some two minutes of silence. By the time controllers gave permission for the aircraft to climb to the higher altitude, QZ8501 had disappeared from radar.
What has emerged since the December 28 crash is air traffic control delays are common in a region that is experiencing unprecedented growth in traffic volume, with much of the expansion due to the boom in low-cost carrier operations.
LCCs are increasingly vying for space in now over-crowded air corridors. The number of passengers carried annually across the Asia-Pacific has jumped by two-thirds in the last five years, to more than 1 billion, and budget airlines make up about 60% of seat capacity in Southeast Asia.
While pilots in the region are reluctant to speak openly about the situation, privately they said the skies are becoming more dangerous as more aircraft enter service. One Indonesian captain, who regularly flies the same route operated by QZ8501, told Orient Aviation delays in requests for course changes and different altitudes occur frequently, mainly because of changed weather conditions. But they are often rejected because there are too many planes flying at the altitude requested.
“The result is you have to take a snap decision on whether to fly into the weather or, if you believe there is real danger, alter course without permission and worry about the consequences later,” he said.
The pilots flying the AirAsia aircraft might have been in that situation and staying on course while waiting for ATC permission may have been their downfall, he said. A Singaporean pilot said as airways become more crowded, it is taking ATC longer to co-ordinate requests and give clearances such as higher altitudes and weather deviations. Delays to requests can be critical in a region where changing conditions such as strong winds and tropical thunderstorms pose time-critical challenges for pilots.
None of this information comes as a surprise to the local airline industry. At its annual Assembly of Presidents in Tokyo last November, the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) said airlines are investing heavily in fuel-efficient planes to meet rising demand, but there is growing concern about matching infrastructure expansion to this growth.
The growth in airline capacity, with new generation jets equipped with the latest high technology equipment, is outpacing developments in co-ordinating the region’s aviation regulations and protocols, said carriers. “Leaving aside all the accidents, this region is going to see the largest growth of air traffic for the next 20 years,” said Ken McLean, IATA’s regional director of safety and flight operations. “Do we have the rules and regulations to meet it?” he asked. Right now, most airline chiefs would respond with a resounding ‘No’.”
McLean is one of the leaders in moving the region towards a concept of Asian “Seamless Skies”, rather than attempting to mimic Europe’s largely failed attempts to forge “Single Skies”. The concept recognizes that Asia is a diverse continent with a myriad of differing regulators, unlike Europe with its European Union and single regulator. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), for example, has no regional agencies overseeing aviation safety or co-ordinating air traffic control, unlike the more developed European market.
Aviation experts hope QZ8501, tragic though it has been, may spur moves to improve the region’s infrastructure and its patchwork of differing safety standards. Alan Khee-Jin Tan, professor of aviation law at the National University of Singapore said: “Hopefully, the QZ8501 crash will galvanize the states into making technical harmonization a priority.” He pointed out there are difficult issues in achieving harmonization because they impact on national sovereignty. Countries in the region are also at very different levels of development and capacity.
The reputational stakes are particularly high for Indonesia, which is forecast to be one the world’s largest aviation markets by 2020. Despite improvements, the air safety record of Southeast Asia’s most populous nation remains patchy. Not surprisingly, Indonesia’s air safety regime is being closely scrutinized after the latest crash.
In the recent past, serious lack of safety oversight by the country’s regulators resulted in the nation’s airlines being banned from flying to Europe and the U.S. A few airlines, including flag carrier, Garuda Indonesia, are now exempted from the bans.
But concerns remain in the industry about the country’s air safety systems. At present, to keep aircraft travelling in a flight corridor at a safe distance from each other, Indonesian air traffic controllers still employ procedural separation, using pilots’ radio reports to calculate their position relative to other traffic.
This operating procedure takes longer than the more sophisticated radar separation system used in Singapore and elsewhere where controllers can more quickly assess radar returns from all aircraft in the area.
“There is a lot of work to be done to address and identify deficiencies and to strengthen regulatory oversight. That’s true in Indonesia and it’s true in a number of other markets,” said the AAPA’s director general, Andrew Herdman.
He said the expanding air traffic in the region should push airline executives, governments and civil aviation bodies to improve coordination efforts. “Countries are quite sensitive to their progress. The industry is growing. The population is growing quite rapidly. So the quality of regulatory oversight has to keep pace with demand,” Herdman said.
Even though there is a possibility the investigation into QZ8501 may find the disaster was not the fault of the airline, but the result of a string of events involving air traffic congestion and pressures, the Indonesian government has alleged Indonesia AirAsia was operating outside the rules.
It is reported the airline was cleared by the transportation ministry to fly the route from Surabaya to Singapore on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, but it was actually flying on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays (the day the accident occurred).
Contradicting this report is a statement by Singapore’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAAS), which said it had authorized Indonesia AirAsia to operate daily flights during the winter season under a bilateral air-services accord. The conflict has revealed a lack of co-ordination between Singapore and Indonesian authorities.
For its part, Indonesia did react quickly. It immediately conducted an audit of flight permits for all domestic carriers and imposed sanctions on five domestic airlines. Transportation Minister, Ignasius Jonan, said the companies were Garuda Indonesia, Lion Air, Wings Air, Trans Nusa and Susi Air. The government suspended flight permits for 61 routes at the five airlines.
Lion Air, the largest carrier in the country, committed the most violations, with the government suspending 35 of its routes. Garuda breached regulations on four routes. The minister said all airport authorities and operators will be audited with the assistance of the National Police Criminal Investigations Directorate (Bareskrim), to learn if potential problems such as allegations of route buying were well founded. The country’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) would assist the ministry in the audit.
From June this year, the government will revoke the licences of airlines that do not own at least five aircraft and charter carriers that do not own at least one aircraft. “If airlines cannot fulfill this requirement their licenses will be revoked,” he said.
According to Indonesian law, airlines must operate at least 10 aircraft with five owned by the carrier and five leased. Charter airlines must own at least one aircraft and lease at least two to operate. Jonan also said he was considering a plan to ban all LCC operations in Indonesia, which most observers believe will not eventuate.
Founder and chief executive of the AirAsia group, Tony Fernandes, said on the day of the crash: “Until today, we have never lost a life. But I think that any airline chief executive who said he can guarantee his airline is 100% safe, is not accurate. We have carried 220 million people up to this point. Of course, there’s going to be some reaction, but we are confident in our ability to fly people,” he said.
| Over regulation limits crew recruitment Martin Eran-Tasker, the technical director of the Association of Asia-Pacific Airlines said
“In our opinion, the perceived shortage problem in the near term is that the movement of qualified staff needed to fill available positions is restricted by the lack of harmonized regulatory procedures that allow the verification, confirmation and transfer of qualifications and licenses of technical and pilot staff from one jurisdiction to another,” he said. |
