Safety not keeping pace with airline industry growth: expert
The Asia-Pacific region is expected to account for twothirds of global aviation growth over the next 20 years, but regulators — particularly in Southeast Asia — are not keeping up, according to a former airline executive.
“South Asia and Southeast Asia are not stable places from a safety standpoint,” Michael E. Levine, a former senior executive at major North American airlines — including Continental Airlines and Northwest Airlines — and a professor at New York University, said in an interview.
AirAsia Flight 8501 crashed Sunday in the Java Sea with 162 people on board. The accident, presumed to be related to bad weather in the area, is a blow to the Malaysian low-cost carrier, which has had a strong safety record.
It also follows two disasters involving Malaysia Airlines flights in 2014, although Levine said it’s likely the three crashes are just “unfortunate coincidences.”
The Asian airline industry has grown rapidly, particularly in Southeast Asia where lowcost carriers dominate, experienced pilots are in short supply and air traffic controllers are stretched to deal with growing demand.
“In Asia-Pacific — particularly in Southeast Asia — individual, country-by-country solutions to (air-traffic management) challenges are no longer sufficient to meet forecasted demand,” the International Air Transport Association said in its 2014 annual review of the commercial aviation sector.
The Asia-Pacific region, which doesn’t include North Asia, saw 0.7 serious accidents per million flights in 2013, higher than every other region in the world, except for the former Soviet Union and Africa.
And IATA forecasts that nearly half of all air travel will touch the Asia-Pacific region by 2034, up from about 40 per cent today. That means routes to, from and within the region will see an extra 1.8 billion passengers annually by 2034.
A lot will need to change if the region is to avoid more serious accidents.
“There are three issues: you have rapid growth, you have a relatively weak regulatory history and you have what I would describe as a wide range of company cultures,” Levine said.
Indonesia’s airlines are particularly notorious for bad safety records, and the European Union has banned almost all of them from flying in EU airspace due to safety fears.
But Levine said Malaysia’s regulatory regime is also suspect, and he recommends travellers do their research before flying on any regional airline in Southeast Asia.
“Malaysia is not a place where I would just automatically assume that any airline I flew that was under their jurisdiction would be safe,” he said.
“I wouldn’t describe the Malaysian regulatory regime as one of the strongest in the world by a long shot.”