IMPROVEMENT OF EDUCATION QUALITY OF PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN POST-EMERGENCY YOGYAKARTA
In memory of the AFR Journalist, the Morgan Mellish Memorial Project was set up to help support a UNICEF education project in Indonesia.
In 2006 a large earthquake devastated the province of Yogyakarta in Indonesia and 1200 schools were damaged or destroyed. The funds received from the The Morgan Mellish Foundation and from Fairfax Business Media have enabled UNICEF to rebuild some of these schools and improve the quality of primary education in Yogyakarta.
The Morgan Mellish Memorial Project has helped to improve the education of thousands of children giving them a chance for a better future.
THE PROJECT – CREATING LEARNING COMMUNITIES FOR CHILDREN (CLCC)
Immediately after the 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake, UNICEF initiated provision of temporary learning spaces, basic learning materials, and psychosocial support for 270 schools benefitting approximately 20,000 children.
After the emergency phase, UNICEF focused on the provision of facilities and school building repairs and maintenance as well as working to improve the quality of delivery of basic education and generating better governance in the school management.
The objectives of this project is to improve the education of hundreds of children, giving them the chance for a better future and provide a permanent memorial to remember Morgan Mellish.
RESULTS:
The funds received from the Morgan Mellish Foundation and Fairfax Business Media have enabled UNICEF to rebuild 12 schools and improve the quality of primary education being delivered at those schools through development of teaching aids; training for teachers and community workers in school planning and resource management; grants for educational materials such as textbooks to supplement government funding.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Perilous approach
Stephen Fitzpatrick April 07, 2009
The Australian
IF it seems Indonesia's air safety record has improved since the Garuda crash two years ago that claimed 21 lives and has now seen pilot Marwoto Komar sentenced to jail, it is an illusion at best. Less than two hours after yesterday's decision, a military plane crashed into a hangar at an airbase in West Java, killing 24 crew.
And while there has not been a commercial air disaster on such a scale as the Garuda crash since that morning, a closer inspection of the lessons learned reveals structural issues affecting Indonesian aviation.
After Marwoto variously blamed wind and mechanical problems during landing, and his co-pilot Gagam Saman Rochmana changed his story on the stand to say that buffeting had caused him to black out during the fatal final seconds, the experienced 45-year-old captain has been found guilty of causing death by negligent flying, and sentenced to two years in jail.
It's a historic decision, marking one of the few times an airline captain has been found guilty of a criminal offence in relation to a crash - and the first such time in Indonesia - but Marwoto is far from the only weak spot in Indonesian aviation.
The facts of the day are well known and were repeated in the summing up in court yesterday in the central Java city of Yogyakarta, where the tragedy occurred.
Soon after dawn on March 7, 2007, Marwoto, having ignored a growing deviation from his filed flight plan while still at least 10 minutes from Yogyakarta's airport, then a series of automated cockpit voice warnings and finally the shouted urgings of his co-pilot, brought his Boeing 737-400 in at twice the correct speed.
The jet bounced three times on hitting the runway, then burst through a fence, across a military access road and into a paddy field, where it caught fire.
Among the 21 who died were five Australians: Australian Federal Police officers Brice Steele and Mark Scott, AusAid country head Allison Sudradjat, diplomat Elizabeth O'Neill and The Australian Financial Review journalist Morgan Mellish. The Sydney Morning Herald reporter Cynthia Banham was seriously injured, losing both legs.
All were travelling in connection with a visit to the ancient royal city by then foreign minister Alexander Downer.
But air accident investigators say it's never a single thing that causes a crash; rather, there is a build-up of factors, most of which could have been addressed individually.
Had it not been for the access road where there should have been a safety run-off area, Marwoto's inexplicable decision to land despite all the warnings might not have produced the torn wings, ruptured fuel tanks and subsequent inferno that caused most of the 21 deaths.
Had airport emergency services been adequately equipped and maintained, and had they been able to get across the access road to where the jet was burning, more lives could have been saved. Instead, firefighters tried in vain to direct their under-pressurised hoses from more than 100m away, hindered further by spectators riding motorcycles across them.
The Indonesian Pilots Federation says Marwoto should never have been taken to a criminal trial but instead should have been subject only to industry and civil sanctions, as are most pilots who survive such incidents.
"His licence has been revoked, that's the heaviest penalty possible for a pilot, there's nothing above that," federation spokesman Manotar Napitupulu said last week.
Critics of the stranglehold pilots' associations worldwide have over the issue of criminal prosecutions say pilots should be subject to the same duty of care and liability issues as other professionals, and to criminal prosecutions where relevant. But pilots insist judges and juries are not competent to examine negligence in their industry and insist other failings, such as maintenance, industry standards and company policy - including fuel quota regimes - have a part to play in accidents.
The key question is whether Indonesia has done anything about addressing the broader issues of transport safety that the Garuda crash revealed. The answer is a resounding no. It's not for want of trying, including through a $24 million, three-year fighting fund from Australia designed to improve our largest neighbour's ability to turn around its appalling safety record.
But barely a week goes by without an air traffic incident of some kind. Yesterday's crash of a military Fokker 27 at Bandung, killing 24, came two weeks after a plane operated by the second-string national airline, Sriwijaya Air, was forced to make an emergency landing after an engine failed at 610m. That Jakarta-bound 737-200 had barely left the runway at Tanjung Pinang, on Bintan island south of Singapore, when the pilot requested urgent clearance to divert to nearby Batam island.
Days earlier, a passenger jet operated by Lion Air slid off the runway at Jakarta's airport while landing in heavy rain, breaking the front landing gear and left wing. Luckily there were no injuries among the 158 passengers and six crew, but the extraordinary thing is how commonplace and accepted such incidents have become.
Indonesian airlines have pariah status internationally almost everywhere outside Asia except for Australia, and there have long been claims that exception exists only because of the political turmoil a ban on Indonesian carriers flying to Australia would produce. Not least, presumably, would be a reciprocal Indonesian attack on Australian airlines, and with the global financial crisis seeing Australian consumers increasingly shifting to low-cost, short-haul flights such as the traditional holiday in Bali, the economic effect would be deep and lasting.
A European Union ban on all Indonesian airlines has been in place since July 2007; it was prolonged indefinitely last June. The edict is not restricted to any one company; the flagship carrier, Garuda, had to gain a special exemption to fly President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his entourage to London last week for the G20 meeting. It was the first Indonesian flight to Europe since the restriction was imposed in response to the 2007 Garuda crash and to an earlier Adam Air disaster, when a plane disappeared off Sulawesi island on New Year's Day 2007 as its disoriented pilots misread vital instrumentation and mistakenly turned off the autopilot. All 102 people on board were killed.
Observers do not expect the EU ban to be lifted before the second half of this year, although Garuda has ordered 10 widebody Boeing 777-300 jets with which it hopes to resume services to Amsterdam next year. Indonesia's airlines are also accorded the US Federal Aviation Authority's lowest rating.
It's a precarious position for the industry to be in, since with the global economic downturn air travel across Southeast Asia is a key growth market and Indonesia's figures are especially healthy. Transport Ministry data shows domestic air travel leapt from about 10 million passengers annually six years ago to more than 40 million today.
The Australian assistance package, signed by Transport Minister Anthony Albanese in Jakarta in January last year, is meant to improve safety across all transport sectors. The troubled maritime sector, which features regular rainy-season sinkings of overcrowded passenger ferries, is also a beneficiary under the program.
The package is strictly about capacity building, not, for instance, addressing crucial concerns such as the access road at Yogyakarta, which still remains in place, partly due to squabbles over who ought to pay for its relocation. Most airports across Indonesia have similar basic structural defects of various kinds.
"This capacity building involves accident investigation training, also training flight safety inspectors with regard both to operational and technical matters," says Transport Ministry spokesman Bambang Ervan.
Indonesia's National Transport Safety Committee (KNKT) also has acquired technology recently that could aid technicians trying to pull information off black-box cockpit voice recorders and flight data recorders that can pinpoint what went wrong in the final moments of a doomed journey.
"Although we cannot yet use (these devices), we hope we will be able to by the end of this year or the beginning of next, but because they are still new, the technicians and analysts are still being trained in Australia," Ervan says.
He says Indonesia is anticipating the day it can perform credible investigations into its own disasters, a process with which, in the case of the Adam Air and Garuda crashes, it was heavily reliant on outside help. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, for instance, played a leading hand in preparing the accident report into the Garuda crash.
The head of the bureau's Indonesian equivalent agency, Tatang Kurniadi, admitted a month ago his office was too understaffed to produce adequate investigations into most incidents and that some matters remained unexamined.
"This is a matter of human resources and skills," Kurniadi said at a transport safety workshop in Jakarta, adding that his office had just 39 investigators and that, as these were hired on a contract basis, they were not paid regularly.
Industry analyst and Angkasa (Aerospace) magazine editor Dudi Sudibyo says any recent improvements in Indonesia's airline sector fall well below requirements.
"The big problem is human resources," he says. "We are short of safety inspectors and if we want to employ more of them it's going to take time and money. And air traffic controllers are underpaid, really underpaid, even though they have (the lives of) thousands of passengers in their hands. How can they work at their best if they have to be thinking about putting food on the table? Salaries, improving prosperity, is important."
The situation came to a head last month with the announcement that 26 air traffic controllers would take leave from the state airports operator PT Pura Angkasa to work abroad, most of them in the Middle East. With an estimated nationwide air traffic controller shortfall of about 700, it was not a good omen.
Likewise, pilot retention rates are appalling. The expansion worldwide of air travel markets means the best Indonesian pilots rarely fly for Indonesian carriers.
Garuda chief executive Emirsyah Satar admitted in an interview with The Australian last year it was difficult for his airline - the country's most successful - to pay salaries attractive enough to keep top pilots.
From Sudibyo's perspective, there is a light on that horizon with the opening last month of a pilot training school in Bali. "The first 40 graduates from that school, (half) will go straight into service at Garuda, and the (rest) at Lion," he says. "So there is an improvement coming from the private sector; we can't just look to governments." But it may all be too little, too late. Sudibyo admits that with new flying schools opening, there is no way existing capacity can meet the demand of an aggressively expanding industry.
And while carriers such as Garuda and Lion, as well as the former military-owned Mandala, are modernising their fleets, there are still plenty of clunkers among the country's 200 aircraft, as anyone who travels the country knows.
Stephen Fitzpatrick is The Australian's Jakarta correspondent.
The Australian
IF it seems Indonesia's air safety record has improved since the Garuda crash two years ago that claimed 21 lives and has now seen pilot Marwoto Komar sentenced to jail, it is an illusion at best. Less than two hours after yesterday's decision, a military plane crashed into a hangar at an airbase in West Java, killing 24 crew.
And while there has not been a commercial air disaster on such a scale as the Garuda crash since that morning, a closer inspection of the lessons learned reveals structural issues affecting Indonesian aviation.
After Marwoto variously blamed wind and mechanical problems during landing, and his co-pilot Gagam Saman Rochmana changed his story on the stand to say that buffeting had caused him to black out during the fatal final seconds, the experienced 45-year-old captain has been found guilty of causing death by negligent flying, and sentenced to two years in jail.
It's a historic decision, marking one of the few times an airline captain has been found guilty of a criminal offence in relation to a crash - and the first such time in Indonesia - but Marwoto is far from the only weak spot in Indonesian aviation.
The facts of the day are well known and were repeated in the summing up in court yesterday in the central Java city of Yogyakarta, where the tragedy occurred.
Soon after dawn on March 7, 2007, Marwoto, having ignored a growing deviation from his filed flight plan while still at least 10 minutes from Yogyakarta's airport, then a series of automated cockpit voice warnings and finally the shouted urgings of his co-pilot, brought his Boeing 737-400 in at twice the correct speed.
The jet bounced three times on hitting the runway, then burst through a fence, across a military access road and into a paddy field, where it caught fire.
Among the 21 who died were five Australians: Australian Federal Police officers Brice Steele and Mark Scott, AusAid country head Allison Sudradjat, diplomat Elizabeth O'Neill and The Australian Financial Review journalist Morgan Mellish. The Sydney Morning Herald reporter Cynthia Banham was seriously injured, losing both legs.
All were travelling in connection with a visit to the ancient royal city by then foreign minister Alexander Downer.
But air accident investigators say it's never a single thing that causes a crash; rather, there is a build-up of factors, most of which could have been addressed individually.
Had it not been for the access road where there should have been a safety run-off area, Marwoto's inexplicable decision to land despite all the warnings might not have produced the torn wings, ruptured fuel tanks and subsequent inferno that caused most of the 21 deaths.
Had airport emergency services been adequately equipped and maintained, and had they been able to get across the access road to where the jet was burning, more lives could have been saved. Instead, firefighters tried in vain to direct their under-pressurised hoses from more than 100m away, hindered further by spectators riding motorcycles across them.
The Indonesian Pilots Federation says Marwoto should never have been taken to a criminal trial but instead should have been subject only to industry and civil sanctions, as are most pilots who survive such incidents.
"His licence has been revoked, that's the heaviest penalty possible for a pilot, there's nothing above that," federation spokesman Manotar Napitupulu said last week.
Critics of the stranglehold pilots' associations worldwide have over the issue of criminal prosecutions say pilots should be subject to the same duty of care and liability issues as other professionals, and to criminal prosecutions where relevant. But pilots insist judges and juries are not competent to examine negligence in their industry and insist other failings, such as maintenance, industry standards and company policy - including fuel quota regimes - have a part to play in accidents.
The key question is whether Indonesia has done anything about addressing the broader issues of transport safety that the Garuda crash revealed. The answer is a resounding no. It's not for want of trying, including through a $24 million, three-year fighting fund from Australia designed to improve our largest neighbour's ability to turn around its appalling safety record.
But barely a week goes by without an air traffic incident of some kind. Yesterday's crash of a military Fokker 27 at Bandung, killing 24, came two weeks after a plane operated by the second-string national airline, Sriwijaya Air, was forced to make an emergency landing after an engine failed at 610m. That Jakarta-bound 737-200 had barely left the runway at Tanjung Pinang, on Bintan island south of Singapore, when the pilot requested urgent clearance to divert to nearby Batam island.
Days earlier, a passenger jet operated by Lion Air slid off the runway at Jakarta's airport while landing in heavy rain, breaking the front landing gear and left wing. Luckily there were no injuries among the 158 passengers and six crew, but the extraordinary thing is how commonplace and accepted such incidents have become.
Indonesian airlines have pariah status internationally almost everywhere outside Asia except for Australia, and there have long been claims that exception exists only because of the political turmoil a ban on Indonesian carriers flying to Australia would produce. Not least, presumably, would be a reciprocal Indonesian attack on Australian airlines, and with the global financial crisis seeing Australian consumers increasingly shifting to low-cost, short-haul flights such as the traditional holiday in Bali, the economic effect would be deep and lasting.
A European Union ban on all Indonesian airlines has been in place since July 2007; it was prolonged indefinitely last June. The edict is not restricted to any one company; the flagship carrier, Garuda, had to gain a special exemption to fly President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his entourage to London last week for the G20 meeting. It was the first Indonesian flight to Europe since the restriction was imposed in response to the 2007 Garuda crash and to an earlier Adam Air disaster, when a plane disappeared off Sulawesi island on New Year's Day 2007 as its disoriented pilots misread vital instrumentation and mistakenly turned off the autopilot. All 102 people on board were killed.
Observers do not expect the EU ban to be lifted before the second half of this year, although Garuda has ordered 10 widebody Boeing 777-300 jets with which it hopes to resume services to Amsterdam next year. Indonesia's airlines are also accorded the US Federal Aviation Authority's lowest rating.
It's a precarious position for the industry to be in, since with the global economic downturn air travel across Southeast Asia is a key growth market and Indonesia's figures are especially healthy. Transport Ministry data shows domestic air travel leapt from about 10 million passengers annually six years ago to more than 40 million today.
The Australian assistance package, signed by Transport Minister Anthony Albanese in Jakarta in January last year, is meant to improve safety across all transport sectors. The troubled maritime sector, which features regular rainy-season sinkings of overcrowded passenger ferries, is also a beneficiary under the program.
The package is strictly about capacity building, not, for instance, addressing crucial concerns such as the access road at Yogyakarta, which still remains in place, partly due to squabbles over who ought to pay for its relocation. Most airports across Indonesia have similar basic structural defects of various kinds.
"This capacity building involves accident investigation training, also training flight safety inspectors with regard both to operational and technical matters," says Transport Ministry spokesman Bambang Ervan.
Indonesia's National Transport Safety Committee (KNKT) also has acquired technology recently that could aid technicians trying to pull information off black-box cockpit voice recorders and flight data recorders that can pinpoint what went wrong in the final moments of a doomed journey.
"Although we cannot yet use (these devices), we hope we will be able to by the end of this year or the beginning of next, but because they are still new, the technicians and analysts are still being trained in Australia," Ervan says.
He says Indonesia is anticipating the day it can perform credible investigations into its own disasters, a process with which, in the case of the Adam Air and Garuda crashes, it was heavily reliant on outside help. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, for instance, played a leading hand in preparing the accident report into the Garuda crash.
The head of the bureau's Indonesian equivalent agency, Tatang Kurniadi, admitted a month ago his office was too understaffed to produce adequate investigations into most incidents and that some matters remained unexamined.
"This is a matter of human resources and skills," Kurniadi said at a transport safety workshop in Jakarta, adding that his office had just 39 investigators and that, as these were hired on a contract basis, they were not paid regularly.
Industry analyst and Angkasa (Aerospace) magazine editor Dudi Sudibyo says any recent improvements in Indonesia's airline sector fall well below requirements.
"The big problem is human resources," he says. "We are short of safety inspectors and if we want to employ more of them it's going to take time and money. And air traffic controllers are underpaid, really underpaid, even though they have (the lives of) thousands of passengers in their hands. How can they work at their best if they have to be thinking about putting food on the table? Salaries, improving prosperity, is important."
The situation came to a head last month with the announcement that 26 air traffic controllers would take leave from the state airports operator PT Pura Angkasa to work abroad, most of them in the Middle East. With an estimated nationwide air traffic controller shortfall of about 700, it was not a good omen.
Likewise, pilot retention rates are appalling. The expansion worldwide of air travel markets means the best Indonesian pilots rarely fly for Indonesian carriers.
Garuda chief executive Emirsyah Satar admitted in an interview with The Australian last year it was difficult for his airline - the country's most successful - to pay salaries attractive enough to keep top pilots.
From Sudibyo's perspective, there is a light on that horizon with the opening last month of a pilot training school in Bali. "The first 40 graduates from that school, (half) will go straight into service at Garuda, and the (rest) at Lion," he says. "So there is an improvement coming from the private sector; we can't just look to governments." But it may all be too little, too late. Sudibyo admits that with new flying schools opening, there is no way existing capacity can meet the demand of an aggressively expanding industry.
And while carriers such as Garuda and Lion, as well as the former military-owned Mandala, are modernising their fleets, there are still plenty of clunkers among the country's 200 aircraft, as anyone who travels the country knows.
Stephen Fitzpatrick is The Australian's Jakarta correspondent.
Despair as Garuda pilot gets two years
Tom Allard in Yogyakarta, Andrew West and Jonathan Pearlman
SMH April 7, 2009
A GUILTY verdict and a two-year jail sentence for the pilot at the controls of the plane that crashed and killed her brother and 20 others did nothing to soothe the pain or bring closure to Caroline Mellish.
Disoriented after a long flight from Australia, bemused and angry as she listened to the three-hour retelling of the evidence in the trial of Captain Marwoto Komar, Ms Mellish was quietly but deeply distressed after the sentence was finally revealed at Sleman district courthouse in Yogyakarta yesterday.
"I don't feel like justice has been served," said Ms Mellish, the sister of Morgan Mellish, The Australian Financial Review journalist who died in the crash, and the only Australian relative of a victim to make the journey to Yogyakarta for the verdict.
"That was the first time I ever saw [Komar]. It was quite emotional," she said. "Because I couldn't understand everything in court it didn't seem quite real. And hearing he only got two years made it even harder."
Prosecutors were considering asking for life on the grounds the crash was deliberate, but then amended their request to four years for criminal negligence.
Making matters worse for the relatives of the victims, Komar's lawyers said they would appeal against the verdict.
Elsewhere in Indonesia, 24 military personnel were feared dead when their training aircraft crashed at an air base in West Java yesterday, an air force spokesman said.
The aircraft was landing during a training flight when it crashed in Bandung, 110 kilometres south-east of Jakarta.
The father of Allison Sudradjat, an AusAID officer who died in the 2007 Yogyakarta crash, was also disappointed with the sentence, which he said was inadequate.
Kevin Keevil said the four years sought by the prosecution would have better reflected the pilot's reckless behaviour. "It does not give me any peace of mind," Mr Keevil said. "I have a personal belief that the sentence is inadequate given what transpired on the day, especially in view of the pilot's behaviour."
But Mr Keevil said he respected the Indonesian justice system, just as his late daughter did.
Mr Keevil said he still mourned for her. "I have been to her grave and shed tears over her grave but it is all I can do."
He harboured no grievance against Indonesians or their government, he said.
"We very much like the Indonesians and their country."
The prosecution of a pilot under criminal law following an accident is highly unusual, but pressure from the Australian Government, victims and their families, as well as a damning report from air transport investigators persuaded police to act.
Komar ignored 15 automated warnings - described as loud "whoop whoops" by the judges. Verbal warnings from the co-pilot to abort the landing were also ignored. He was travelling at twice the normal speed.
Five Australians were among the 21 who died. As well as Mellish and Ms Sudradjat, Liz O'Neill, a diplomat, and Mark Scott and Brice Steele, Australian Federal Police officers, lost their lives. Cynthia Banham, a Herald journalist, was badly burnt and broke her back but made a remarkable recovery.
The former foreign minister Alexander Downer said yesterday the sentence was too light and the Government should consider asking the Indonesians to push for an appeal. Mr Downer's visit to Indonesia was being followed by government officials and journalists, several of whom were on the Garuda flight.
With Karuni Rompies and agencies
SMH April 7, 2009
A GUILTY verdict and a two-year jail sentence for the pilot at the controls of the plane that crashed and killed her brother and 20 others did nothing to soothe the pain or bring closure to Caroline Mellish.
Disoriented after a long flight from Australia, bemused and angry as she listened to the three-hour retelling of the evidence in the trial of Captain Marwoto Komar, Ms Mellish was quietly but deeply distressed after the sentence was finally revealed at Sleman district courthouse in Yogyakarta yesterday.
"I don't feel like justice has been served," said Ms Mellish, the sister of Morgan Mellish, The Australian Financial Review journalist who died in the crash, and the only Australian relative of a victim to make the journey to Yogyakarta for the verdict.
"That was the first time I ever saw [Komar]. It was quite emotional," she said. "Because I couldn't understand everything in court it didn't seem quite real. And hearing he only got two years made it even harder."
Prosecutors were considering asking for life on the grounds the crash was deliberate, but then amended their request to four years for criminal negligence.
Making matters worse for the relatives of the victims, Komar's lawyers said they would appeal against the verdict.
Elsewhere in Indonesia, 24 military personnel were feared dead when their training aircraft crashed at an air base in West Java yesterday, an air force spokesman said.
The aircraft was landing during a training flight when it crashed in Bandung, 110 kilometres south-east of Jakarta.
The father of Allison Sudradjat, an AusAID officer who died in the 2007 Yogyakarta crash, was also disappointed with the sentence, which he said was inadequate.
Kevin Keevil said the four years sought by the prosecution would have better reflected the pilot's reckless behaviour. "It does not give me any peace of mind," Mr Keevil said. "I have a personal belief that the sentence is inadequate given what transpired on the day, especially in view of the pilot's behaviour."
But Mr Keevil said he respected the Indonesian justice system, just as his late daughter did.
Mr Keevil said he still mourned for her. "I have been to her grave and shed tears over her grave but it is all I can do."
He harboured no grievance against Indonesians or their government, he said.
"We very much like the Indonesians and their country."
The prosecution of a pilot under criminal law following an accident is highly unusual, but pressure from the Australian Government, victims and their families, as well as a damning report from air transport investigators persuaded police to act.
Komar ignored 15 automated warnings - described as loud "whoop whoops" by the judges. Verbal warnings from the co-pilot to abort the landing were also ignored. He was travelling at twice the normal speed.
Five Australians were among the 21 who died. As well as Mellish and Ms Sudradjat, Liz O'Neill, a diplomat, and Mark Scott and Brice Steele, Australian Federal Police officers, lost their lives. Cynthia Banham, a Herald journalist, was badly burnt and broke her back but made a remarkable recovery.
The former foreign minister Alexander Downer said yesterday the sentence was too light and the Government should consider asking the Indonesians to push for an appeal. Mr Downer's visit to Indonesia was being followed by government officials and journalists, several of whom were on the Garuda flight.
With Karuni Rompies and agencies
Monday, April 6, 2009
Garuda pilot jailed over fatal crash
Geoff Thompson, Indonesia correspondent
Radio Australia News
The pilot of a Garuda jet which crashed in Indonesia two years ago, killing 21 people including five Australians, has been sentenced to two years in jail.Marwoto Komar came to court saying he hoped to fly again, but the former Garuda pilot left as the first pilot ever in Indonesia to be found guilty of criminal negligence for crashing a plane. Four out of five judges said they found him legally and convincingly guilty of criminal negligence, and said Komar did not do enough to correct the Boeing 737's rapid descent. Komar was accused of negligently causing the deaths of 21 people when he ignored 15 automated cockpit warnings and attempted to land a Boeing 737 jet at Yogyakarta Airport at almost twice the normal landing speed. Garuda Flight 200 bounced off the runway and slammed into an embankment before breaking apart and catching fire. As judges finished reading their verdict sentencing, Komar declared "I can't accept the decision, I will appeal".Asked whether he apologised to the disasters victims, Komar said only that he was deeply mournful. In sentencing him to two years jail, judges said Komar's lack of remorse worked against him. Prosecutors were seeking a four-year jail term for Komar.The five Australians killed in the accident were a diplomat, an AusAID official, two Australian federal policemen and Financial Review journalist Morgan Melish.After the judgement, the sister of Mr Melish said two years jail was no compensation for the loss of 21 lives.
Radio Australia News
The pilot of a Garuda jet which crashed in Indonesia two years ago, killing 21 people including five Australians, has been sentenced to two years in jail.Marwoto Komar came to court saying he hoped to fly again, but the former Garuda pilot left as the first pilot ever in Indonesia to be found guilty of criminal negligence for crashing a plane. Four out of five judges said they found him legally and convincingly guilty of criminal negligence, and said Komar did not do enough to correct the Boeing 737's rapid descent. Komar was accused of negligently causing the deaths of 21 people when he ignored 15 automated cockpit warnings and attempted to land a Boeing 737 jet at Yogyakarta Airport at almost twice the normal landing speed. Garuda Flight 200 bounced off the runway and slammed into an embankment before breaking apart and catching fire. As judges finished reading their verdict sentencing, Komar declared "I can't accept the decision, I will appeal".Asked whether he apologised to the disasters victims, Komar said only that he was deeply mournful. In sentencing him to two years jail, judges said Komar's lack of remorse worked against him. Prosecutors were seeking a four-year jail term for Komar.The five Australians killed in the accident were a diplomat, an AusAID official, two Australian federal policemen and Financial Review journalist Morgan Melish.After the judgement, the sister of Mr Melish said two years jail was no compensation for the loss of 21 lives.
Garuda pilot jailed but crash victims say 'justice not served'
Stephen Fitzpatrick
Jakarta correspondent April 06, 2009
The Australian
FORMER Garuda pilot Marwoto Komar has appealed after being found guilty of criminal negligence over the plane disaster in which 21 people, including five Australians, died.
Captain Marwoto has been sentenced to 2 years' jail over the crash in March 7, 2007.
The guilty verdict came despite a last-minute plea from Indonesia's pilot federation calling for the pilot to be acquitted.
The Australians killed in the crash were diplomat Liz O'Neill, AusAID official Allison Sudradjat, Australian Federal Police officers Brice Steele and Mark Scott, and Australian Financial Review journalist Morgan Mellish.
Caroline Mellish, the younger sister of Morgan Mellish, told The Australian: “Justice has not been served – he was not given the maximum sentence.”
“If they think his wholly and solely responsible then two years is not enough. And if they think he’s not they should have mentioned the failings of the system in their judgement.”
Captain Marwoto immediately appealed the sentence and was free to go home until the next hearing. His family members were in tears after the verdict and left the courtroom.
A majority of a panel of five judges sentenced Komar in the Sleman District Court.
Prosecutors wanted Komar jailed for four years, and have said there is no evidence to support his claim that the Boeing 737 malfunctioned.
The maximum available sentence for the crime is seven years in prison.
Investigators have said Komar ignored a series of warnings not to land the plane as he brought it in at about twice the safe speed.
Jakarta correspondent April 06, 2009
The Australian
FORMER Garuda pilot Marwoto Komar has appealed after being found guilty of criminal negligence over the plane disaster in which 21 people, including five Australians, died.
Captain Marwoto has been sentenced to 2 years' jail over the crash in March 7, 2007.
The guilty verdict came despite a last-minute plea from Indonesia's pilot federation calling for the pilot to be acquitted.
The Australians killed in the crash were diplomat Liz O'Neill, AusAID official Allison Sudradjat, Australian Federal Police officers Brice Steele and Mark Scott, and Australian Financial Review journalist Morgan Mellish.
Caroline Mellish, the younger sister of Morgan Mellish, told The Australian: “Justice has not been served – he was not given the maximum sentence.”
“If they think his wholly and solely responsible then two years is not enough. And if they think he’s not they should have mentioned the failings of the system in their judgement.”
Captain Marwoto immediately appealed the sentence and was free to go home until the next hearing. His family members were in tears after the verdict and left the courtroom.
A majority of a panel of five judges sentenced Komar in the Sleman District Court.
Prosecutors wanted Komar jailed for four years, and have said there is no evidence to support his claim that the Boeing 737 malfunctioned.
The maximum available sentence for the crime is seven years in prison.
Investigators have said Komar ignored a series of warnings not to land the plane as he brought it in at about twice the safe speed.
Garuda death crash pilot jailed
Tom Allard
SMH April 7, 2009
The pilot of the Garuda plane that crashed in Yogyakarta two years ago, killing five Australians, has been sentenced to two years in prison.
Marwoto Komar was today found guilty of criminal negligence. Prosecutors had sought a four-year jail term.
One of the panel of five judges remarked that the sentence was about the prevention of future accidents rather than revenge.
The Australians killed were diplomat Liz O'Neill, AusAID official Allison Sudradjat, Australian Federal Police officers Brice Steele and Mark Scott and Australian Financial Review journalist Morgan Mellish.
Komar remained impassive as the three-hour verdict was read out.
Caroline Mellish, the sister of Mr Mellish, remained stony-faced as Komar learned of his fate.
Outside the court, Ms Mellish said: "I don't feel that justice was served."
The Boeing jet skidded off the runway at Yogyakarta airport in March 2007, after landing at twice the recommended speed, bursting into flames as its passengers frantically tried to escape.
Passengers included journalists and police officers who were following the then Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer on a tour of Indonesia. Many only chose to be on the flight at the last moment.
An investigation by transport officials into the crash showed Komar ignored 15 automated warnings to abort the landing attempt. The court also heard he had ignored verbal warnings from his co-pilot urging him to go around.
Herald journalist Cynthia Banham was badly burnt and broke her back in the incident but defied the odds and made a remarkable recovery. She is now the paper's diplomatic editor.
Last month, Komar had made his final pleas of innocence to the panel of judges who were considering charges that he was criminally negligent in causing the crash.
He blamed his co-pilot and technical problems and his legal team insisted that the death toll of 21 was largely due to the late response of fire engines.
Komar's latest defence was a departure from his previous explanations and have centred on a sudden bout of turbulence knocking the plane off course.
The accusation of culpability by his co-pilot, Gagam Rohmana, follows earlier evidence from Gagam that he had warned the pilot to abort the landing and "go around" but was ignored.
Survivors of the crash had told how the front of the plane quickly burst into flames after impact.
One of the judges dissented and said that he did not think the pilot should have been found guilty.
Komar will appeal the decision.
Tom Allard is the Herald's Indonesia Correspondent.
SMH April 7, 2009
The pilot of the Garuda plane that crashed in Yogyakarta two years ago, killing five Australians, has been sentenced to two years in prison.
Marwoto Komar was today found guilty of criminal negligence. Prosecutors had sought a four-year jail term.
One of the panel of five judges remarked that the sentence was about the prevention of future accidents rather than revenge.
The Australians killed were diplomat Liz O'Neill, AusAID official Allison Sudradjat, Australian Federal Police officers Brice Steele and Mark Scott and Australian Financial Review journalist Morgan Mellish.
Komar remained impassive as the three-hour verdict was read out.
Caroline Mellish, the sister of Mr Mellish, remained stony-faced as Komar learned of his fate.
Outside the court, Ms Mellish said: "I don't feel that justice was served."
The Boeing jet skidded off the runway at Yogyakarta airport in March 2007, after landing at twice the recommended speed, bursting into flames as its passengers frantically tried to escape.
Passengers included journalists and police officers who were following the then Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer on a tour of Indonesia. Many only chose to be on the flight at the last moment.
An investigation by transport officials into the crash showed Komar ignored 15 automated warnings to abort the landing attempt. The court also heard he had ignored verbal warnings from his co-pilot urging him to go around.
Herald journalist Cynthia Banham was badly burnt and broke her back in the incident but defied the odds and made a remarkable recovery. She is now the paper's diplomatic editor.
Last month, Komar had made his final pleas of innocence to the panel of judges who were considering charges that he was criminally negligent in causing the crash.
He blamed his co-pilot and technical problems and his legal team insisted that the death toll of 21 was largely due to the late response of fire engines.
Komar's latest defence was a departure from his previous explanations and have centred on a sudden bout of turbulence knocking the plane off course.
The accusation of culpability by his co-pilot, Gagam Rohmana, follows earlier evidence from Gagam that he had warned the pilot to abort the landing and "go around" but was ignored.
Survivors of the crash had told how the front of the plane quickly burst into flames after impact.
One of the judges dissented and said that he did not think the pilot should have been found guilty.
Komar will appeal the decision.
Tom Allard is the Herald's Indonesia Correspondent.
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