Airline News
AAPA’s Herdman: more transparency in Indonesia
February 3rd 2015
Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) director general, Andrew Herdman, plea for the Indonesians to publicly reveal its preliminary report on the crash of Indonesia AirAsia flight QZ8501 has so far fallen on death ears. Read More » Herdman “strongly” advising Indonesian authorities to make public the preliminary report it submitted last week to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
“I strongly urge them to publish it,” Herdman told aviation news service Air Transport World last week in Washington. “What purpose is served by not making it public? The public have a right to know what’s known in terms of the basic facts.” He added there is “immense pressure” on Indonesia to be transparent in the accident investigation. Meanwhile, sources close to the investigation told the Wall Street Journal that investigators believe first officer Rémi-Emmanuel Plesel, a French national, was flying the aircraft as it manoeuvred to avoid a storm on December 28 en route from Surabaya to Singapore.
Bloomberg has reported, from two sources with knowledge of the investigation, that the pilots of the lost aircraft cut power to a critical computer system that normally prevents airplanes from going out of control.
Indonesian aviation authorities have been vehemently criticised following the loss of flight QZ8501 as it emerged that not only did the crashed AirAsia plane not have the necessary route permits, but six other Indonesian carriers were also unauthorized to operate a total of 61 domestic and regional routes.
As reported by This Week in Asia-Pacific Aviation, the Indonesian transport minister, Ignasius Jonan, last week proposed significant changes to the country’s aviation safety standards. Indonesia’s carriers have been growing their fleets rapidly over the past decade. However, training, maintenance, air traffic control and infrastructure could not keep pace with the airlines’ growth.
