Originally Posted by
Capetonian
Presumably a flight plan was filed so I do wonder how the (supposed) breach of operating permit can be deemed as 'the problem'.
Funny enough, the
CAAS from Singapore reported that Air Asia had approval from them to operate daily. This is quite typical of Indonesian bureaucracy to focus on petty things such as this to distract the world away from the bigger issues. It has been reported that the new Minister for Transport Ignasius Jonan stormed in to the headquarters of Indonesia Air Asia yelling and screaming at flight operations staff demanding why the Air Asia flight could have departed without receiving a weather briefing from the briefing office.
The simple answer was probably, that early in the morning, none of his briefing officers were ready for duty. I've operated from Surabaya for 4 years often doing the early morning red eye from Surabaya to Bali with a 0600 departure. We call Juanda ground at 0550 for ATC clearance and push back and often there is no answer because the airport doesn't officially open until 0600. If you take off before 0600, then there is a 2 million rupiah fine and some carriers like Air Asia and Citilink seem to be happy to pay the fine so that they can maintain their schedules.
Because of this, our dispatchers and most other airlines also too, obtained weather information from the Bureau of Meterology through their online service, when the Briefing office was 'unavailable'.
And according to this article, the Indonesian DGCA does not have a problem with that, which pretty much puts egg on the face of the Minister for Transport.