Two years flying in Indonesia
After I left Indonesia I decided to write a letter to a few local English newspapers. My objective was to improve safety and change, even just a bit, what should be changed. As far as I know they didn't publish it (or if they did then I wasn't inform).
Today in a world ruled by the economy, I am almost convinced that many things will never change, I find it sad but this is the way it goes. However I have now another target: inform the crewmembers of what is going on in this part of the world, to be prepared for the worst.
This letter is not technical, it was written for the Indonesian citizens. It is however a long letter, although all the anecdotes were summarised, but everything mentioned, and especially the way it is mentioned, will tell you how you feel when you fly so much that you always risk to fall asleep in a cockpit.
For sure I would have changed a few things if I had to write it again, to say it in a smoother way maybe, but I decided not to cheat, just copy and paste without looking back. As far as I am concerned this ugly truth should have been published, at least partially. Of course everyone is very welcome to react and to question me about all of this, especially the Indonesian pilots.
Dear fellow pilots, if you fly in this part of the world, here is what you might encounter:
I was arrived in Indonesia in August 2009, to start my first job as an airline pilot with a low cost airline and I joined the national company in December 2010. It was not the first time that I was working abroad but my first time in Asia and clearly the cultural shock was important. My philosophy had always been before: "say what you think, do what you say". Here I had to change, respect the tradition; which is normal of course, I don't like myself when some foreigners come in my country and want to make the rules.
Unfortunately the Asian way doesn't push to the same transparency when it comes to report a problem or even just simply give a negative answer. The reasons are usually to avoid some disappointments to someone, or very often at work to avoid admitting a lack of knowledge or a mistake. In both ways: from the employee to the one who is in charge... or especially the other way down, from the boss with his team workers, because he is supposed to know everything and of course he doesn't.
In my opinion it's sad, I feel myself happy if someone tells me when I'm wrong because then I'm learning something and improving.
And if it's ok to turn around in the city with a taxi driver who doesn't have the right to admit that he doesn't know the way (and I would have never blamed him when I see how the addressing system can be done in Jakarta), well in the aeronautical industry, and especially in my job, this is definitively not ok. In the taxi you can do that until you run out of fuel if you want and then you just walk (furthermore it’s even faster than waiting in the taxi during the traffic jam…); in the plane if you do that: you just crash.
In the Middle Age in my country, the messenger of bad news was punished by a death sentence. People in that time believed that he was the cause of the problem: if he didn't mention it everything would have been fine. Superstition, fear of some imaginary divine entity or whatsoever... that was more than 700 years ago. Believe it or not, I saw a bit of this in a cockpit in Indonesia. When you just attempt to start talking about any potential problem we could encounter during the flight, such as a bad weather forecast for instance, which could logically push you to decide to carry more fuel on board (it allows us to wait a longer time in the sky until the weather improves) or delay the departure; before you can mention it many Indonesian pilots don't want to hear and say it's no problem. They already decided even without reading that everything would be fine. And if you say anything about that: maybe you will make it happen. But if we don't and have this "positive energy" that animates all these pseudo-sciences then we will be fine...
No there is no such thing as a devil waiting, ready to make our fears real. Quite the contrary as a general rule (not only limited to a professional point of view) if you don't mention a problem very often you simply amplify it.
But how can we improve the safety with people who believe that everything is written, already decided by some kind of divine action? I don't know where they got this idea from, because nowhere in the Bible is written that you can be as much lazy and uneducated as you want and God will still do your job, quite the contrary. And my friends who can read the Arabic language told me that it's the same in the Koraan. Two major religions of Indonesia. In facts many people who often go to the musk or to the church die every year from an earthquake or a tsunami and we all know it...
The second obstacle in order to reach one day a satisfactory level of safety in the sky of Indonesia is the tendency that have so many Indonesian pilots (and not only the pilots) not to follow the rules. I guess this is actually a cultural problem when I see how people drive in Jakarta or simply act in the everyday life.
To operate an aircraft we, the operational pilots from any company, follow the procedures initially decided by the manufacturer such as Boeing or Airbus, considering all the requirements from different civil aviation authorities.
And it is not only limited to the operation of the aircraft itself, in a flight every details matter; such as keeping the cockpit door closed during the complete flight to prevent the risk of hijacking (criminal activities which purpose is to take control of the aircraft and their passengers), if one of the pilots needs to go to the toilets: call the cabin crew first to check if the toilets are vacant without any potential risk to open the door for a few seconds and immediately lock behind. Each pilot needs to have a different meal to prevent the risk of food poisoning, etc...
To define the procedures to operate the aircraft, during its certification, the test pilots follow a programme approved by the manufacturer’s engineering department, after completion of every necessary simulation. These pilots have a very good experience and knowledge of one or several of the manufacturer's previous aircrafts and receive a special training, to be able to sort out the best course of actions in case of problem during these tests. In addition they are permanently connected to a team of specialists on the ground receiving their data and comments and ready to provide an immediate assistance.
These procedures are some sequences of actions based on a logical chain of events. Trying to mix them in an inappropriate order, or skip a few of them, is like trying to bake a cake without following the recipe. It's very likely not going to be good, if not being a disaster...
Every test flight has an objective and is generally very demanding. This is why they fly much less than the operational pilots (especially in Indonesia but I will develop this subject later), and this is why the certification of an aircraft takes several years. They would never "try" a new procedure without any preparation, especially in a revenue flight full of passengers.
Many Indonesian pilots do it, as I said, and they clearly don't have the same knowledge, skills and organisation. Their decision making is very often questionable. We were all surprised to see how bad can be a pilot who has logged 20000 flight hours or more and who flew in most places of the world, on many types of aircrafts, for short or long hauls. Their main concern seems to be a smooth landing for the passengers. Since the NASA’s studies we know that a trained monkey can do that… and it's clearly not what defines a good pilot, quite the contrary according to the manufacturer operation manuals, especially when the runway is short like in Yogjakarta or Pekanbaru (because they use the thrust of the engine for a nice touchdown and it increases the landing distance to stop the aircraft).
As an explanation, I was thinking that maybe after so many years, they became lazy or tired of studying and didn't want to open a book and follow the procedures anymore. But I think there is another reason.
One day I was flying as a safety pilot on a training flight with a student. The instructor told me that he had just finished his flying school and was starting his career directly on a jet aircraft of 80 tons. When I mean directly I really mean it: not even one minute on a Cessna or any other light aircraft! This was so incredible to me that I asked him to repeat this information to be sure I understood clearly (frequent misunderstandings happened between the Indonesian pilots and us). Even in Indonesia I don't think it was allowed. If you fly a big modern aircraft, you don't feel anything with all the hydraulic or electronic assistances. You don't know how an aircraft is flying; this student never even did an approach to stall recovery (to be trained to react if the speed is insufficient) or any other manoeuvre for real!!! And he will probably never, as I find it so complicated to fly as a private pilot in Indonesia (I mean really flying not just turning around the airfield). And in addition to that, he was following his own procedures already (not respecting the book). When I was inquiring about that, the instructor simply said that it was to make it easier. I was shocked because I got the chance to have very good instructors, in Indonesia, who always showed me the corresponding lines in the books each time they asked me to change something in my method or when I was not able to answer to their questions. I would have liked to fly with them all my time here actually...
We were talking in this case about non-vital items but you have to understand that this is only the beginning. This young pilot, in a country where we respect so much the older people (which is itself a good quality that, I am afraid, we lost in the western countries) and also the chain of command with no real free mind, he will never get the chance to perform according to the standard. And I can imagine what kind of pilot he will be after 20000 hours, which is less than 20 years in Indonesia...
Of course nobody is perfect and we all do mistakes, but this is very different from the intentional fault much more dangerous. Being used to perform below the standard has the consequence to seriously increase the risk of incident or accident in case of any additional problem or unusual situation. From the general opinion of the expatriate pilots flying in Indonesia, this attitude is irresponsible and dangerous.
As previously mentioned, this dangerous tendency is not only limited to the pilots. In the following part, I will have to illustrate my point by using several examples from what I saw and heard during the last years. I will not name the concerned airlines because it would be unfair as I can only be sure of what I personally saw; rumours from several sources have generally a substantial part of truth, but it's impossible to define how much and not being aware of other problems in other companies doesn't mean that they don't exist. Therefore I will intentionally not identify what I know for sure from what I consider as likely being the truth. And also: we all have our own perception, so everything I will say is of course subjective and in this case without any kind of evidence.
But let's simply put it that way: you can consider the probability that nothing, of what I am going to reveal here, is true - with all the consequences this article could have on my career - around zero... And I know that my pilot mates will immediately understand what I'm talking about, if not even identify themselves as already being involved in the following situations, this is their sore privilege.
Every pilot I met, Indonesian or not, is convinced that the corruption is omnipresent in Indonesia. Some airlines pay for everything: get some medical certificates or flight licenses for their pilots. They might pay for the working permit of their expatriate pilots, maybe even for the certificates to operate their aircrafts in Indonesia.
I'm pretty sure that an airline already paid to get a special dispensation in order to make at least one of us flying during a few months with an expired european license using a "valid validation" of his invalid license!
The corruption can be present on several levels and under different aspects. Let me show you how deep it can be... It took me some time to understand why the controllers of Jakarta never follow the established procedures, for the departures and arrivals of the airplanes. These routes in the sky are stored in the computer of the aircraft and the autopilot could follow them easily. Everything is ready, we could use the procedure turns defined for holding and wait for our turn to land, simply following the path. It's possible to do it on several levels like they know how to do in USA or Europe with a bigger traffic; for the best fuel efficiency, the last arrived will be above and all the aircrafts will get down one by one until they can land. And to minimise the holding time in all the modern aircrafts, during the cruise we can define the time of arrival, the precision of the different navigation systems is, from what I read and saw, always greater than 100 meters and 5 seconds for the space and time allocations, all tolerances considered. And it will very likely be even better. So many possibilities to make it efficient... but they don't use any of them.
Instead of that they give to all of us multiple instructions like: "turn left heading 250 degrees, descend to 5000 feet, reduce speed to 230 knots". Most of the time you will just hear the values, sometimes without any call sign, which is confusing and dangerous, in a very poor english. It was hard for all of us to get used to the local pronunciation, native english speakers or not, and if we ask them to repeat they sometimes do it even faster or ignore us. At the end it's not efficient and if only 20 or more aircrafts are near the airport then the communications are saturated and it's impossible to talk or make a distress call (which has always been the primary function of the radio). So why are they doing that?
The answer is: if you follow a defined path before the landing separated by 2 or 3 minutes between each aircraft, then the controller cannot give the priority to one of them and allow him to "overtake" inside of the other aircrafts’ path widely vectored around the airport on purpose. In Indonesia a controller can have two jobs (or maybe more I don't know) and he can work for an Indonesian airline company in the same time. In addition an airline can offer them some benefits like some free tickets, etc..
Several of us have already been guided dangerously close to a mountainous area. Fortunately once again in the modern aircrafts, unlike in the past, the computer has a map of most of the obstacles, so we don't blindly follow their instructions until these guys kill us all...
This corruption is dangerous, Jakarta is considered by the local pilots themselves as a jungle where no rules apply. Of course every jungle has his king...
A few words about maintenance. In some airlines, the flight engineers and the other technicians can have a very poor knowledge and education. We personally saw four men trying to remove the wheel of an aircraft with their bare hands! This scene would have been very funny, and would have deserved to be broadcasted in a comic movie, if only these cavemen discovering an incredibly advanced time machine were not the staff in charge of the maintenance of our own aircraft. The one which could transport you and your family in the risky sky of Indonesia... You wouldn't do it with your own car, these men were trying it with a much bigger wheel! After a relatively long time they realised it was too hard, then they went to bring back the appropriate tool. This example is self explicit enough to avoid any other explanation.
I read on Internet this story about an expired fire extinguisher, the one we would use for the engine in case of emergency, that the pilots requested from the ground personal to be replaced. They tried to corrupt them with a few hundreds thousands of Rupiah (tens of USD) to accept to do the flight anyway. According to my colleagues, who flew in this airline before, this story could likely be true.
In some airlines, the selection of the cabin crew members has clearly other criteria than the safety... and their training is insufficient. The "senior" flight attendant in charge can be very young, like 19 year old, and not being able to make some important decisions; the rest of the cabin crew members even younger, would be totally lost in case of emergency.
In the year 2010 in Jakarta during the push back (which occurs at the very beginning of the flight after the aircraft closes his doors) an expatriate pilot was not able to understand the message of the flight attendant who was calling the cockpit. The Indonesian pilot sitting next to him was in communication with the ground engineer in the same time (also not able to talk english...) and couldn't talk to her immediately. Once he did, the pilots understood that a passenger was having a heart attack and they stopped the towing. None of the cabin crew members were able to assist this poor woman. As a former first aid worker, I did a few simulations myself and I can imagine how stressful can be this situation. And I am not 20 or less... But this time, it was clearly not the worst case scenario: on the ground at 50 metres from the boarding gate and a doctor who could finally use the first aid equipment was on board. But he couldn't resuscitate her and she died in the cabin. She was less than 60 and I didn't even see her name appearing in the newspaper...
The last item regarding the safety I would like to emphasise on this non exhaustive list - the most dangerous according to my personal experience, especially when combined with the two other factors - is the working conditions of Indonesia.
The duty time limitation has a maximum of 14 hours for the pilots and 18 hours for the flight attendants. It includes all the flights of the day and the duties before, between and after. Each company seems to be apparently free to define how much time will be allocated before and after the flight. This limit is applicable day... or NIGHT! Which is already a total non sense and, trust me, this is very dangerous.
The flight time limitation, all the flights summed together, is 9 hours per day, 30 hours per 7 consecutive days, 110 hours per month and 1050 hours per year. This is one of the highest of the world.
A minimum of 9 hours each day and 24 hours of rest every 7 days. Clearly not enough, so many days off (almost always only one at a time) I spent at home to recover from my previous week. No private life, always the feeling to live in a cockpit (I even wrote most of this article in a cockpit!). The crew members are always tired and of course it has some consequences on their performance of everyday and in their capacity to react to an emergency situation (which is fortunately very rare and that makes it the main reason why there are not so many fatalities, nothing else).
In some airlines they push very hard to unofficially exceed these limitations, even sometimes using a form where you log your illegal hours paid with a higher rate! Some pilots have two logbooks, one for the civil aviation and another one with the real hours to look for another job maybe one day. Unfortunately so many airlines in the world (not only limited to Indonesia) are considering only the number of hours and not the conditions in which these hours were done. I personally don't understand that. I am relatively young in this business but I already know that between two pilots who flew respectively 2000 and 1500 hours during 2 years, the second one, who has less flight hours, has MORE experience. He was not sleeping every flight... And I don't say that because I am in the second case! (it's actually a real performance to fly only around 1500 hours in more than 2 years in Indonesia... you have to refuse a lot of schedules exceeding the limitations and even face some intimidations for this result). I saw some pilots flying so much that they were acting like zombies before going to fly.
It is true that during all these years since the commercial aviation has been developed, the automatisms became more and more present in a cockpit. But it allowed the companies to significantly increase the frequency of flights and reduce the turn around times on the ground, in order to decrease the costs of operation, while reducing the number of pilots in the cockpit. Actually I think that flying has never been harder as it is now. I often heard people saying that being a pilot is easy (most of them never actually went inside of a cockpit, except in a light aircraft maybe), I would simply answer that there is more than one way to do his job. The more you fly, the more you are supposed to study, to keep your knowledge current; we talk of a real big amount of knowledge (especially with - but not only limited to - the elaborated systems of the modern aircrafts): in theory hundreds of technical pages per week in average to cover absolutely everything to a good level. And most of the pilots in the world are not native english speakers. So far I never met a pilot who could do all of that. And also because, unfortunately in this world, these hours define your experience and the more experimented you are, the more responsibilities you get (like flying to very specific airports or dealing with some unusual problems) and therefore the more you should know. In practice I saw the exact opposite. It was already hard for me to study during these last years and try not to fall asleep in a cockpit. I cannot imagine if I were flying more than 1000 hours per year...
I should rather say: hard for me not to fall asleep… too often. I am not ashamed to admit that I was taking some short naps during the cruise level in good weather. With the autopilot engaged and the other pilot to monitor, it's actually much safer than taking the chance of falling asleep, or being in a condition of low vigilance, during a critical phase of flight like it happened to all of us, at least one time, especially by night. However as this was a two-man-operation aircraft, my action was technically condemnable. So strange can sometimes be the law...
I read in the news, in the middle of the year 2011, that the ministry of transportation of Indonesia declared that an airline pilot could not legally fly more than 50 hours per month. Either these people are complete ignorant or total liars. How come some pilots legally reach the maximum of the year (1050) in the month of October then? Not to mention about the unofficial records...
Even worst! At the end of the year 2011 the law has changed, it's not anymore 30 hours per 7 days but 30 hours since the last day off (the 24 hours of rest for every 7 days is fortunately still valid so far). So now you can exceed 30 hours; in theory up to 27 hours per 4 days, reach the 110 hours limit in the middle of the month and... switch to another logbook maybe!
Come on! Wake up Indonesia! Everybody is trying to make the law more restrictive to protect their people except you. You are going from very low standard to extremely low... Profit, is it only what matters to you? I heard before I came here that the cost of life was cheap. Was it literally?
In early 2010 I was myself the witness and survivor of a severe incident which could have very quickly turned into a drama. I will never forget that night for the rest of my life where fortunately nobody died (which means in Indonesia: the public did not hear about it). The technical details are not important, what is relevant is the cause of this incident which was due to the physical conditions of the pilots. They were flying too much and... they were respecting the law! This was my statement to the civil aviation: "what was the cause of the incident? _You were!"
I will also add that all the reports we made to a safety department of an airline company (which is, in Indonesia, not as independent as it should be from the other departments) won't change anything eventually. The profit is the main concern (if not the only one) and, in this period of intense economic development in this part of the world, they need all the pilots they can find.
To be continued...