Indonesia’s Lion Air is Indonesia’s biggest domestic airline and with two massive orders for jets from Airbus and Boeing aims ot beocme one of the world’s largest carriers. Except for one problem: its safety record.
While Lion Air (and other airlines) have big plans, a spate of deadly accidents In Indonesia has raised international concern about the nations’s air-safety standards.. Along with most of the Indonesian carriers, Lion—is under a European Union and US safety ban. While Lion doesn’t fly into either airspace, it loses business as many travel agents are barred from booking tickets with Lion Air. Lion have had seven incidents in a decade including one in April tis year when one of its brand new 737-800s crashed into the sea short of landing at Bali’s internatinbal airport. All 108 passengers and crew escaped -some with injuries. In 2004 passengers were not so lucky, dying at sabah airport
In its May preliminary report on the last crash Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee raised concerns about Lion’s pilot training and procedures. They recommended the carrier address three safety issues in pilot training
- emphasise to pilots the importance of complying with the descent minima of the published instrument approach procedure when the visual reference cannot be obtained at the minimum altitude.
- “review the policy and procedures regarding the risk associated with changeover of control at critical altitudes or critical time”
- To ensure the pilots are properly trained during the initial and recurrent training program with regard to changeover of control at critical altitudes and or critical time.
To do this, Lion Air are seeking partners with European Safety Agency or U.S. Federal Aviation Administration certification for their trainng porgrams including:
- Wings Flying School, which aims to trains 6o to 70 rookie pilots to get licenses this year and 150 next year
- Lion Training Centre, which provides advanced training on passenger aircraft such as the Boeing 737
Related Posts
That is incredibly scary. I’ve never even thought about doing airline safety reviews.