NEW YORK: The government has started crackdown and AirAsia has been banned five on its key Indonesian domestic services out of Surabaya airport. The bans on the flights – three from Surabaya to the capital, Jakarta, one to Bali and one to regional centre Bandung – will deal another blow to the Malaysia-based low-cost carrier, which had already been suspended from the Surabaya-Singapore route entirely. It’s part of a broader government crackdown on lax administration of flight permits from Surabaya Airport. The fast-growing Indonesian-owned low cost carrier Lion Air has been stopped from flying nine of its weekly services, and smaller aircraft Trigana and KalStar have also been affected.
And late on Tuesday, another airport, Medan, made a similar decision, banning AirAsia from flying its Tuesday Medan to Palembang service. The general manager of Indonesia’s airport authority, Trikor Hardjo, said he had made the decision because the airlines had changed aspects of their scheduling and so lacked permits to fly some services. He told news portal Detik.com he had, “tightened the rules of the game”. But the sudden move will cast Indonesia’s teeming aviation industry into disarray, and is likely to mean long delays for passengers as they are transferred to other flights.
The Indonesian government’s regulation of its burgeoning airline industry has been judged one of the worst in the world. The International Civil Aviation Organisation ranks its ability to administer aviation as worse than that in Albania, Kyrgyzstan, Cameroon and Burkina Faso.
Aviation commentator Gerry Soejatman said the latest move by regulators was a ridiculous reaction to the death of 162 passengers on the December 28 AirAsia flight to Singapore. If the crackdown extended to other airports, other than just Surabaya, hundreds of flights could be suspended or banned.
“Do you want to crack down and stop everything? Or shouldn’t you just say, ‘Fix the problem or I’ll revoke your licence’.”
Indonesia has already suspended the employment of a number of civil aviation employees who were involved in the approval for AirAsia to fly its fatal route to Singapore. Regulators are also now enforcing a requirement for face-to-face briefings with pilots on weather conditions.
Reports emerged from Surabaya that AirAsia was offering a 300 million rupiah ($29,000) initial compensation package to the families of crash victims, but people contacted by Fairfax Media said money had not been discussed with them.
