Waiting for black boxes

Airplane crashes are attributable to among other things the weather, human factors (aircraft crew and air traffic controllers) or mechanical problems, which are in a way related to the mechanics or maintenance officers.

A black box records conversations with a control tower officer and keeps data about defects and records the condition of the engine during the flight. If the box is found, it will be sent to the country where the aircraft concerned was manufactured.

The content of the recorded data is then analyzed to establish the possible cause of the crash. To the best of my recollection, however, none of the findings of black box analyses with respect to so many air crashes here have, unfortunately, been made public.

I have been working since 1970 for an oil company operating in remote areas across the archipelago where not all airfields are equipped with minimum safety facilities.

My question is whether or not airports where wide-bodied aircraft can land have been provided with an I.L.S. (Instrument Landing System), for example VOR (VHF Omni Range), Automatic Direction Finder and so forth.

As for airplanes such as the F-27, HS-748, Twin Otter, G-1, Casa-212, Skyvan and the like -- which take passengers to remote airfields -- they have all been fitted with GPS (Global Positioning System) which can determine the location, coordinates and altitude of an aircraft when it loses its way or its communication with the airfield, especially when the weather is foggy.

In August 1995, I was on a flight from Ambon to Tual in a chartered Casa-212 along with an officer of the search and rescue (SAR) team from Ambon. The officer had his SAR equipment for the assignment in Kaimana, Irian Jaya, where an HS-748 flying from Tual to Kaimana had crash-landed due to foggy weather in a mountainous forest area.

The crash site was located by a Puma SA-330, owned by PT Pelita Air Service and chartered by our company Union Texas (Kal) Limited. The plane was handed over to the SAR team.

At that time, the transportation minister said that an aircraft must have, at the very least, a GPS, especially if it plied routes in remote areas.

Regarding the Casa-212 which crash-landed in Ambon on July 9, 1997, the plane had engine trouble while flying the Ambon-Tual- Dobo route around July 1 or July 2, 1997, and the engine was repaired in Tual.

When I was waiting at the Tual airfield for my plane to take me back to Ambon on July 7, 1997, I saw the engine of the plane (Casa-212) started and then left on for some 45 minutes by the crew from Ambon who were assigned to take the plane back to Ambon.

However, the flight was postponed perhaps because the plane needed further repair and required new spare parts.

If I am not mistaken there were no flights (by F-27 or other aircraft) from Ambon to Tual on July 8. So there was no airplane to take spare parts to Tual.

Was it possible that the plane was flown without waiting for the new spare parts or better mechanics to undertake further repair? The fact is that this Casa-212 was flown on July 9 and crash-landed in Ambon.

The point I wish to make is that airplane crashes are local disasters which occur quite frequently while national disasters are forest and estate burning which affect neighboring countries.

Finally, and most probably, the weather or haze was responsible for the crash-landing of Airbus 300-B4, flight GA- 152, in Medan recently.

BERTY POLUAN

Jakarta