Unspun

The Jakarta Post carried the article below in its Oped page today. It was developed further from my earlier posting in this blog.

 Adam Air fiasco shows crisis-prone culture

As usual, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has been quick off the mark in responding to the disappearance of Adam Air flight KI-574 with 102 people on board. He has ordered the transportation minister to investigate all aspects of all airlines.

As usual, the President’s orders are unlikely to yield any lasting results. They are broad to the point of being vague and more symptomatic of a knee-jerk reaction than a carefully considered attack on the real cause of the problem.

Incidents like flight KI-574 occur because the government and the industry have a crisis-prone culture. It is a culture that systematically refuses to respect the fact that crisis-like situations are a fact in the airline industry.

It is this culture that needs to change, from being crisis-prone to crisis-aware. Otherwise Indonesia will be doomed to face the same problems over and over again.

This lack of respect manifests itself in many forms, but two are obvious: the utter lack of enforcement of safety regulations in the airline industry, and the mishandling of information about flight KI-574.

The lack of enforcement is endemic to Indonesia and the airline industry, but it is even more acute in the low-cost carrier industry. Speak to any knowledgeable professional in the industry and they will regale you with tales of shoddy maintenance schedules, dodgy spare parts and appalling training records. The picture that emerges is of an industry waiting for a crisis to happen.

And crises have happened. There have been at least 10 airline mishaps involving at least six different airlines since 2002. Yet what is the track record of enforcement? Paltry. Investigations do not lead to any definite improvements or indictments. Evidence from black boxes disappears into black holes. The government and industry strolls merrily on as if nothing has happened. And nothing will … until the next crisis, which inevitably catches them flat-footed because of their state of denial.

That is exactly what has happened so far in the government’s handling of this accident. We know that the plane went missing en route from Surabaya to Manado. There were 102 people on board. That’s essentially all that was known the day after the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers.

Nonetheless, the transportation minister made the blunder of announcing that wreckage and 12 survivors had been found. His error is not excusable but is perhaps understandable because he is a civilian. He is not trained to handle chaotic situations, like a military officer.

Thus, the mind boggles that an Air Force Base commander, Eddy Suyatno, could have given the minister unverified information he received from the police at face value.

One thing any military teaches its senior officers is to check and double-check their facts in a chaotic situation (such as a battlefield or a plane crash) before making any decisions or taking any actions. That is why there are so many ex-military officers in the crisis management business. This is basic training. One has to wonder about the quality of the Indonesian military when an Air Force base commander accepts unverified information from the police as a basis for action.

These actions, collectively, caused needless grief among the relatives of the passengers. Imagine what a roller coaster your emotions would go through if you were told one minute that there were survivors on the plane in which your family members crashed, only to be told later that it was all a mistake. “Sorry, but we have no idea whether your loved one is alive or dead. In fact we have no idea where the plane is, and we had no reason to get your hopes up.”

Apart from the callousness of such incompetence, what is more important here is the systemic failure of authorities from the transportation minister down to manage a crisis-like situation that has happened at least 10 times over the past five years. (The frequency is escalating: Media Indonesia reports one accident in 2002 and 2004, three in 2005 and five in 2006).

Why are the government and the industry not learning from past mishaps? It can only be explained by the fact that they are all immersed in a crisis-prone culture. So long as this culture persists we will see more and more plane crashes as the low-cost carriers’ fleets age and they struggle more and more to make ends meet.

There is only one way to reduce the likelihood of future accidents. It lies in making the culture of the government and the industry crisis-averse.

A crisis-averse culture is one that does not deny the likelihood of crises occurring. It is a culture that recognizes that crises are man-made disasters and tackles human shortcomings systematically, from recognizing and rewarding industry whistle-blowers to ensuring accountability and enforcement. It is a culture in which leaders, from the minister to the police to senior airline officers, are well-trained in crisis management handling. That includes training them to verify facts before making any decisions or public announcements, precisely to prevent the unnecessary grief caused by wrong information about flight KI-574.

Changing the culture of the government, the enforcers and the industry, ultimately, is a political decision.

Which brings us back to President Yudhoyono and his presidential orders. It is fine to issue them willy-nilly and with great urgency. They count for nothing, however, unless they make a difference to the freewheeling ways of the airline industry, particularly the low-cost carriers.

The President has the power to assert his will to save future lives and prevent unnecessary grief. He should do himself and all air passengers and their relatives a favor by taking this chance to ensure that his orders are carried out with lasting effect, for a change.