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JAKARTA: Indonesia’s new air transport chief is to
step up the monitoring of airlines and could shut some down, a
report said on Thursday, following a fiery plane disaster that
killed 21 people.
“In the near future, hopefully
some [domestic airlines] will be closed down,” Budhi Muliawan
Suyitno was quoted as saying. He did not elaborate on that comment
in the Detikcom news website report.
But Suyitno added his department
would intensify the monitoring of airline operations and look again
at the age of aircraft in Indonesia, as around half were more than
two decades old, the report said.
Suyitno replaced the last air
transport chief on Tuesday amid pressure for better safety in
Indonesia’s skies after a Garuda Indonesia airliner crash-landed
last Wednesday in Yogyakarta and burst into flames, killing 21.
The disaster was Indonesia’s
second major aviation tragedy this year. An Adam Air plane plunged
into the sea on New Year’s Day, killing 102 people, in the earlier
accident.
Indonesia’s airline industry
was deregulated in the 1990s, encouraging a slew of new operators to
take to the skies and catalyzing huge passenger growth.
But confidence in air travel,
which helps to bind the archipelago nation of 17,000 islands, has
been shaken by the deadly crashes and other incidents.
Oetarjo Diran, a member of a
transport task force appointed by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono,
has said that air safety in Indonesia is at a “low point.”
Indonesia has suffered both air
and ferry tragedies recently, with the total death toll from the
worst accidents running into hundreds.
Experts blame old planes and
ships, lax standards and insufficient investment in infrastructure.
--AFP
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