.
If the meltdown of the economic system can be stopped in time, some of us will leave the financial safe houses where we have run for cover and fly to Indonesia next year. There will probably be visits to family in Sumatra, friends in Jakarta, places of leisure in Bali or Lombok and reconnaissance operations on Ambon. For instance. That means we have to plan quite a lot of transport.
We could do that by car or bus. But everybody knows that road traffic Indonesian style is quite adventurous. In other words extraordinary dangerous and rather uncomfortable- though the chances of colliding with a politician as intoxicated as the Austrian politician Haider was last week, before he crashed himself to death, are small in a predominantly Islamic country, I presume.
Maybe in some instances railways can provide the solution. Or sailing. We could take ferries. Not a bad idea. Though pretty slow and hazardous as well. They are in the habit to be overcrowded, capsizing and sinking. And not all of us are tremendous swimmers. So, after all, if we want from, say, Benkulu to, say, Yokyakarta, it probably leaves us no choice than to look for airlines. That is if you leave out swimming, cycling or walking.
Of course some facts about Indonesian airlines didn’t escape my attention, but when I read this I once more realized how much of a coward I am: “Indonesia, an archipelago nation which relies on air routes, has one of the world’s worst air safety records“.
So perhaps we should choose a different destination. But Russia is no option either. In that country planes keep falling from the air like leaves in the autumn. Neither is Africa, where boarding a plane is like playing Russian roulette. It turns out life is risky everywhere.
So I was very relieved when I noticed that the Indonesian Ministry of Transport suspended the ‘Air Operator’s Certificates’ of four airlines. The authorities do their job and take out the unsafe ones. That’s reassuring. Or is it really? Because these four were in the bottom safety ranking which is used by the ministry. That leaves some doubt. I wonder what does that really mean? Is it like the “A” and “B” ranking of banks? So, did they only take out the “Z” rated airlines, but leave the X-rated ones in ( in spite of the anti pornography bill)?
Well, maybe it’s best if I stop worrying. There is no escape from fate. Let’s rely on our luck, do a quick prayer on occasion and keep our fingers crossed.
I am always scared every time I use the Indonesian airlines. So I agree: There is no escape from fate. Let’s rely on our luck, do a quick prayer on occasion and keep our fingers crossed.
Sir, I think you misspelled Yogyakarta with Yokjakarta. You can also spell it Jogjakarta. It’s where I came from, so it kinda caught my eyes
@ dino: You are right. I am stupid. I bow my head in shame, blushed in the solitude of my study, offer my apologies to all former and present inhabitants of the great city and cultural center, and made the correction.
Two Indonesian flights I took, from Jakarta to Jokjakarta and return, recently, were really bad. While US/Dutch pilot would take 20-25 minutes to land, Indonesian pilots (of my flights) took only less than 10 minutes to land. Of course, such act saves some gas, but it’s risky (steep curve and higher speed of landing) and cause horrible turbulence when landing…. It was scary….
But well, in general, I am scared of flying… but I fly umpteenth times a year, anyway. The chance of being death on an airplane crash is much much smaller than of the car accident
I don’t really understand why people are so worried of Indonesian airlines’ safety. Other countries’ airlines fell down or happened to cause minor accidents everywhere recently, UK’s, Nepal’s, Spain’s, Kyrgystan’s, Australia’s, you name it. Go http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_commercial_aircraft and try to find how many Indonesian airlines contributed to passenger’s death in last couple of years. After that, compare it with other countries’ airlines.
I always use Garuda whenever I return to Indonesia from Japan and never encountered any major turbulences or pilot errors or whatsoever. Services given by its flight attendants are also much better than most of prominent foreign airlines I’ve tried more than once, including KLM (sorry Colson), air France, Singapore Airlines, etc.
@ yuki tobi: You are absolutely right. I’m sure you noticed the irony, or at least the relativizing, in my post. Of course I do agree most and most serious accidents do take place outside Indonesia ( compare to India for instance). On the other hand over the period 2001 – 2007 each year at least one (minor or serious) airline incident did happen. And last year (2007) Adam Air (twice) and Garuda had really bad luck. Which doesn’t make a very reliable impression either(http://aviation-safety.net/statistics/geographical/worldmap.php?year=2007).
As for the service by Air France -KLM you are right also. In this respect they are indeed among the worst carriers. And that goes for the space per seat in the KLM Economy Class as well.
@merlyna: I’ve had similar experiences a few years ago. There was this flight over Kalimantan during which both pilots could be observed during the flight in the cockpit reading their papers, their feet leisurely on the instrument panel. Or the flight over Java when my daughter discovered she had a kind of rocking chair – it was moving to and fro at take off, when we had turbulence and during the landing.
Nothing really dangerous. Rather funny actually. I could add them to my standard repertoire called “grandpa is ranting again”. But talking about airline safety….
I just reread my previous comment and found that I look offended, hahahaha. I wasn’t offended at all and feel happy instead for knowing there are foreigners who care a lot about Indonesia.
Thank you for the link, it sure provides much more information than Wikipedia. I do understand your point, I know that there are regular airline incidents in Indonesia. My point is that almost all of those planes are either small planes or belonged to Indonesian private airlines company. Garuda is the only Indonesian airline serving international route (NB: I exclude, for instance, Lion, which serves short international route). On question whether Garuda has pretty good safety standard or not, I don’t have answer, but if we compare number of accidents it had over decade with accidents involving, for example, Qantas, don’t we find Garuda has better record?
just a short answer @Yuki Tobing… Garuda doesn’t have good record in general… 18 crash records since 1950, 2 crash records in the last decade. Qantas, in comparison, has only 2 crash records since 1950.
by comparison, not many airlines in the world have worse record than Garuda — among them are China Airlines, Air India…..
Merlyna, we’re talking about the period between 2001-2007. They must have made an improvement since then and I do surely think we shall not use data from five decades ago. Which source are you referring to because I found more incidents involving Qantas? What about three Scandinavian Airlines incidents just within two months in 2007? Isn’t it worse?
Well, after all, I must admit that Asian airlines had involved in more incidents than European or American ones.
But hey they gave much much better service. 
That’s it. I’m swimming to Bali the next time.
oh but wait.
…
Well, I’d like to think I can swim.
@ merylna: “The chance of being death on an airplane crash is much much smaller than of the car accident” –> Ok, I’m walking back to Bandung today.
@yoanitya: Did you just read freakonomics?
I found data about it there.