Government to finance Lion crash probe

Kurniawan Hari and Tony Hotland, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

The government has rejected Lion Air's offer to help finance an investigation into last week's fatal accident involving one of its airliners in Surakarta, Central Java, which killed 26 people.

"We will not accept any money from Lion Air for the investigation in order to ensure its integrity and objectivity," Minister of Transportation Hatta Rajasa told journalists at the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

He said airlines companies used to make "donations" to government-sponsored investigations into plane crashes by the National Commission on Transportation Safety (KNKT).

But starting this year, the government would independently finance such investigations using funds from the State Budget, Hatta said.

He declined to say how much the investigation into the fatal Lion Air accident at Adi Sumarmo Airport, Surakarta, on Nov. 30, would cost.

The KNKT says it needs more money to fund the investigation.

Commission chairman Setyo Rahardjo said his team had allocated between US$8,000 and US$10,000 for the sending of the ill-fated plane's black box to the United States for examination.

"We need more money to finance the rest of the investigation," he was quoted by Antara as saying.

Separately, Lion Air spokesman Hasyim Arsal Alhabsi denied his company had offered the government money to help finance the probe.

"We have made no such offer. If the opposite was the case, the investigation could end up being biased," he told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday..

Hasyim said the investigation into the Lion Air plane crash was the government's responsibility and that his company would not do anything that could be considered as an attempt to influence it.

Minister Hatta further said that it would take years for the authorities to finish the probe into the accident, which transportation officials and Lion Air have blamed on bad weather.

A total of 23 of some 150 passengers died and dozens of others were injured when the plane skidded off a slippery runway at Surakarta airport and slammed into a graveyard during heavy rain.

Citing an example of how long air accident investigations took, Hatta said that the final report on a 1997 accident involving a Garuda Indonesia plane at Sibolga, Medan, North Sumatra, had just been finished last month.

And, an investigation into another crash involving a Garuda plane, which made an emergency landing in the Bengawan Solo river two years ago, had yet to be completed, the minister added.

Speaking during a hearing with the House's transportation commission, Hatta reiterated his order to all relevant agencies and institutions to improve flight security and safety.

The instruction was sent to the air transportation director, the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency, the National Search and Rescue Bureau, airport managers, air traffic control centers, and airlines.

Responding to a call from the National Awakening Party (PKB) faction in the House for Hatta to resign as an expression of acceptance of moral responsibility for the fatal crash, Hatta said he considered this to be a form of constructive criticism.

PKB faction legislator Erman Suparno said the new transportation minister should step down as several other accidents had occurred so far during the new government's watch.

Apart from the fatal accident in Surakarta, in which a senior PKB legislator was among the dead, at least two other planes have also skidded off the runway in Makassar, South Sulawesi.

No injuries were reported in the two accidents, however.