Just in case you don’t want to fly Allahu Air.
I would not be thrilled if my pilot were named Mohammed. Frankly, I’d rather not have a woman pilot experiencing PMS.
When I can’t sleep, I watch Mayday: Air Crash Investigations. In episode 8 of season 15, we learned about the crash of Garuda Indonesia Flight 200 because of the recklessness of its captain.
I was struck in this episode by how an Australian security officer who survived the crash was pulling people out of the burning plane while the Indonesian rescue workers stood off to the side confused and incompetent.
The safety of a country’s airlines are a good indicator of its competence. Unsurprisingly, Africa’s airlines are the worst.
The oldest airline in Indonesia (founded in 1949),[6] Garuda Indonesia had received a number of criticisms in the months surrounding the crash. According to Australian aviation experts, Garuda Indonesia had one of the worst safety records among the world’s national carriers.[7] Since 1950, Garuda Indonesia has had 13 major accidents. The most recent was in 2002, when Garuda Indonesia Flight 421 ditched in the Bengawan Solo River due to engine flameout caused by excessive hail ingestion, killing a flight attendant.[7] The worst accident was in 1997, when Garuda Indonesia Flight 152 flew into a wooded mountain on approach to Medan, killing 234 people. The managing director of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, Peter Harbison, stated that the major accidents in Indonesian aviation history were all caused by the combinations of airports’ and fleets’ low safety standards and the poor weather conditions in the area, including severe thunderstorms and other forms of inclement weather.[7]
Following the crash of Flight 200, the European Union banned Garuda and all Indonesian airlines from flying into the EU…
At 6:58am local time (UTC+7),[12] the captain attempted to land at Adisucipto International Airport in Yogyakarta, despite a faulty approach with excess speed and steep descent, and the resulting warnings of copilot and flight system.[13] The aircraft touched down 860m beyond the runway threshold[14] at a speed of 221kt, 87kt faster than the normal landing speed.[15] According to passengers, the aircraft shook violently before it crashed.[16] The aircraft overran the end of the runway, went through the perimeter fence, was heavily damaged when it crossed a road, and stopped in a nearby rice field. A fuel-fed fire raged, which could not be reached by airport fire-suppression vehicles. While most passengers were able to escape, a number of passengers perished inside the burning fuselage.[17]
The pilot, Captain Muhammad Marwoto Komar, initially claimed that there was a sudden downdraft immediately before the flight landed, and that the flaps on the aircraft may have malfunctioned.
