Civil aviation safety in Indonesia

The aim of the research described in this thesis is to identify factors that contribute to incidents/accident in the Indonesian civil aviation industry. Three studies were undertaken. The first study comprised of an analysis of 97 official accident investigation reports, and was aimed at capturing the nature of the incidents/accidents. The key results are that Indonesia suffers a relatively high accident rate, with the most prevalent accident types being non-fatal Runways Excursions of jet aircraft at main airports, and Controlled Flight Into Terrain accidents in the highlands, these often being fatal. The second study implemented and analysed the results of a survey of 205 professional pilots currently flying in Indonesia, who have four different flight training backgrounds, being expatriate pilots flying for the Indonesian industry, Indonesian commercial pilots, Indonesian ex-military pilots and Australian pilots. The three pilot survey constructs (cockpit management attitude questionnaire/CMAQ, power distance index/PDI and approach and landing attitudes/ALA) are analysed to compare the four groups of pilots, and it is found that Indonesian national pilots from commercial and military backgrounds have a more cavalier and less consistent approach to safety than expatriate and Australian pilots. The last study comprised an analysis of interviews with 27 senior managers of the Indonesian aviation industry, including managers from regulatory bodies, air operators, training schools, the national transportation safety committee/NTSC and the national aviation weather agency. The manager surveys confirm that a substandard safety culture is believed to exist at all levels of management and agency, as well as in airline operations and training. The three following methods: descriptive, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and thematic analysis are applied for each of the study. To triangulate and discuss the core results of the studies, the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) conceptual model is applied, and the Indonesian system is found to have safety deficiencies at all levels including Organisational Influences, Unsafe Supervision, Preconditions of Unsafe Acts and Unsafe Acts. The combination of bad weather and relatively poor pilot training and operation appears to be prevalent