REFILE-Indonesia puts six airlines on closure warning
22 Mar 2007 15:42:44 GMT Source: Reuters
(Refiles to fix headline to six airlines) By Telly Nathalia, JAKARTA, March 22 (Reuters) - Indonesia is giving six commercial airlines three months to improve safety standards or face closure, the country's aviation chief said on Thursday. An audit of 54 aviation firms revealed that none of them made it to the first of three rating classes, said Budhi Muliawan Suyitno, the director general of civil aviation at the transport ministry. Fifteen companies, including six scheduled passenger airlines, were placed in the lowest category and were considered to have met only minimal standards of safety. National carrier Garuda Indonesia made the second grade. The audit was ordered by the government to evaluate transport safety following a string of deadly air accidents in recent months. First an Adam Air jet carrying carrying 102 people disappeared in January, and on March 7 a Garuda plane overshot the runway and burst into flames, killing 21 people including Australians Suyitno said airlines in the third category would be given warnings to improve standards in three months. "If there's no improvement within three months, the will be a suspension order, and if there's still no improvement they will be shut down," he told reporters. The airlines given three months to shape up were AdamAir, Kartika Airlines, Jatayu, Batavia, Trans Wisata Air and Dirgantara. Air travel in Indonesia, a sprawling country of more than 17,000 islands, has grown substantially since the liberalisation of the airline industry in 1999 which triggered price wars among airlines. The rapid growth raised questions over whether safety has been compromised and aviation infrastructure and personnel can cope with the huge increase. Indonesia is also grappling with problems in other modes of transportation. There have been two serious ferry disasters in recent months killing hundreds of people, while rail accidents on an ageing system built during the Dutch colonial era occur frequently.
