Friday, March 23, 2007. 7:25am (AEDT)
Indonesia: The audit was ordered after a string of deadly air accidents (REUTERS)
Indonesia threatens to shut six airlines
Indonesia is giving six commercial airlines three months to improve safety standards or face closure.
Budhi Muliawan Suyitno, the director general of civil aviation at the Transport Ministry, says an audit of 54 aviation firms has revealed that none of them make it to the first of three rating classes.
Fifteen companies, including six scheduled passenger airlines, have been placed in the lowest category and are considered to meet only minimal standards of safety.
National carrier Garuda Indonesia made the second grade.
The audit was ordered by the Government to evaluate transport safety following a string of deadly air accidents in recent months.
First an Adam Air jet carrying carrying 102 people disappeared in January.
On March 7, a Garuda plane overshot the runway and burst into flames. Twenty-one people, including Australians, were killed.
Mr Suyitno says airlines in the third category have been given warnings to improve standards in three months.
"If there's no improvement within three months, there will be a suspension order and if there's still no improvement they will be shut down," he said.
The airlines given three months to shape up are Adam Air, Kartika Airlines, Jatayu, Batavia, Trans Wisata Air and Dirgantara.
Air travel in Indonesia, a sprawling country of more than 17,000 islands, has grown substantially since the liberalisation of the airline industry in 1999 which triggered price wars among airlines.
The rapid growth raised questions over whether safety has been compromised and whether aviation infrastructure and personnel could cope with the huge increase.
- Reuters
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