Pilots in Indonesia must beware of volcanoes, storms, rice

Pilots in Indonesia must beware of volcanoes, storms, rice
paddies AP Photos NY376-377[ By SLOBODAN LEKIC= Associated Press
Writer=

OVER THE SUNDA STRAITS, Indonesia:

Pilots here must beware of volcanoes, storms, rice paddies

Slobodoan Lekic
Associated Press/Sunda Straits

A wisp of vapor floats innocuously above a small island.

Is it an ordinary cloud? Or is it the engine-choking ash that
sometimes rises from the volcano smoldering below?

An approaching pilot has to make a quick decision -- a mistake
could send the plane spiraling into the Sunda Straits between
Sumatra and Java.

This is one of the first lessons that student pilots pick up
in Indonesia, an equatorial archipelago pockmarked by hundreds of
volcanoes, at least 129 of which still regularly spew hot gases
and ash.

"You must always think of the environment when flying here,"
Ahmed Rizal, chief instructor at the Deraya Flying School, shouts
over the roar of the engine at a sweat-drenched rookie pilot
struggling to keep the Cessna 172 trainer level and on course,
straining to follow the air traffic controllers' crackly
instructions and overcome motion sickness.

While new pilots the world over have their hands full handling
just the basic principles of airmanship, those learning to fly in
Indonesia -- a developing country in the midst of a boom in
commercial air traffic -- must adjust to a special set of
circumstances.

"I've never seen equatorial storms like the ones here," said
Luis Manuel Hernandez, a Venezuelan captain flying for an
Indonesian airline. "I've landed at airports in Indonesia after
maneuvering through a dozen thunderheads on approach."

Hernandez is one of at least 100 foreign pilots flying for
Indonesia's new budget airlines. Some three dozen have been set
up since a new, democratically elected government deregulated the
industry six years ago.

Most of the jets used by these startups are second-hand
airliners leased from Western companies, but last month
Indonesia's top budget carrier Lion Air announced plans to buy 60
new Boeing 737s in a US$3.9 billion deal.

This move has increased the demand for new pilots, because the
foreign flyers typically cost airlines three to four times more
than the $1,000 to $2,000 a month paid to Indonesian captains and
copilots.

Although most Indonesian civilian aircrew were previously
trained by the government aviation university, the current
shortage has been a business boon for the country's handful of
private flying schools such as Deraya.

About 30 youths are enrolled in courses for private pilot's
licenses, multiengine and instrumental ratings and commercial
certificates necessary for a professional career.

Deraya, which also operates a regional airline and an air taxi
service, was established almost 40 years ago by Siti Rahayu
Sumadi, one of the first women pilots in the world's largest
Muslim nation.

"At the time, nobody understood why a woman would want to
start a flying school instead of staying at home and raising a
family, but I was very determined," she said.

Although Deraya's training fleet -- a collection of Cessna 150
two-seat primary trainers, four-seat 172s and the twin-engine
204s -- are carefully maintained and regularly serviced, they are
ancient by Western standards.

Still, operating them is cheaper. Fifty hours of flight time
and the ground school needed for a private pilot's license cost
the equivalent of less than $4,000, compared with $7,000 on
average for a private pilot's certificate in the United States.

Training flights head out of Halim, a former Dutch colonial
air base, through Jakarta's thick smog, and to a training area
about 50 kilometers to the south.

Java, the world's most densely populated place, has few open
areas for emergency landings. Even the rural surroundings of the
training area can be dangerous. Students are warned against
touching down on dry rice paddies whose raised mud pathways could
snag landing gear.

The ever-present haze, caused by high humidity along Java's
low lying coast, makes it almost impossible to orient oneself by
the horizon. This forces students to stare down at the
instruments -- a great way to get motion sickness.

"If you can fly here, you should feel pretty confident almost
anywhere else," says Nobuhiro Sato, a Japanese pupil at Deraya.

GetAP 1.00 -- JUL 14, 2005 07:26:39