I'm a regular reader of the Jakarta Post - mainly because there isn't a choice. There may be one in late September if the James Riady (Lippo Group) backed Jakarta Globe gets it all together but having received an email from the deputy editor (Hi Joe) addressed "Hey scumbag", I'm not sure I want to bother with it.
Whatever, it does seem strange to me that the only websites in Indonesia carrying news of a Sriwijaya 737 skidding off the end of a runway in Jambi on Wednesday afternoon should be Tempo Interactive which posted their article one hour after Son No.1 left a comment to my story about the blasé attitude of retired Air Chief Marshal 'Cheeky' Chappy Hakim, a former chairman of the National Team for the Evaluation of Transportation Safety and Security. (If you link to his blinkered article there is an early comment about the crash. But nothing in the news section.)
Thankfully (?) the Aviation Herald got in earlier.
A Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-200, registration PK-CJG performing flight SJ-62 from Jakarta to Jambi Sultan Taha (Indonesia) with 125 passengers and 6 crew on board, overran the 2000 meter long asphalt runway 31 at Jambi, ploughed through a house and came to a stop in a vegetables field. 6 passengers, 2 flight attendants and a family of three resting in the house were injured, the family father critically (reportedly lost one arm), and rushed to a local hospital.
The two flight attendants were trampled by panicking passengers shoving their way out of the plane. Oh, and Sriwijaya think the farmer was at fault.
Sriwijaya Air spokesman Charles An said the weather at the time was not good, but he also complained that farmers were working close to the runway.
"Three kilometres from the runway should be a clear area," he said.
Presumably, the three kilometres would be designated as a crash zone.
But whither the Post? Using their search engine does uncover one story about a Sriwijaya plane overshooting the runway at Bangka Belitung, but this was on the 18th April earlier this year.
There is also a forum on air safety following a Post editorial about legislative moves to establish an independent air safety regulatory body, moves which were quickly shot down as too many politicians and businessfolk are creaming off tidy profits at passengers' expense.
Low cost airlines can only operate because lives are cheap. (But don't make jokes about them costing an arm or a leg.)
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I do wonder if 'Cheeky' Chappy has been wounded where it hurts - in his pride. As co-leader of Indonesia's delegation to the EU attempting to overturn the current EU ban on Indonesian aircraft entering EU airspace, he's proved to be an abject failure, not that demonstrably enhanced air safety procedures have been put in place or are enforced.
His whinging merely exposes the flaws in this country's governance.
