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JAKARTA - The United States Tuesday advised its citizens not to use Indonesian airlines after a spate of accidents including two disasters which have cost more than 120 lives this year.
Washington has downgraded Indonesian airlines' safety rating and Americans should use other carriers when visiting the country, the US embassy here said in a statement.
"On April 16, 2007, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that it has revised Indonesia's safety oversight category from Category 1 to Category 2," said the statement posted on the embassy's website.
"Whenever possible, Americans travelling to and from Indonesia should fly directly to their destinations on international carriers from countries whose civil aviation authorities meet international aviation safety standards," it said.
Indonesia has been hit by a string of deadly transport accidents including plane crashes, raising doubts about the enforcement of safety standards.
A Garuda jet burst into flames and shot off the runway in the city of Yogyakarta last month, killing 21 people.
On New Year's Day an Adam Air Boeing 737-400 carrying 102 people disappeared from the skies, with only small pieces of the plane found since.
Indonesia is also subject to a litany of minor plane accidents. Last week, a Garuda plane landed with a burst tyre and in February, an Adam Air craft's fuselage bent badly on landing. No one was hurt in those incidents.
Tuesday's statement said the FAA based its safety downgrade on a controversial audit from the Indonesian civil aviation agency which revealed that none of the nation's 54 airlines had met all minimum safety standards.
Last month's audit from the Indonesian Directorate General of Civil Aviation also issued a warning to several airlines to comply with standards in three months or face closure.
The statement came just hours after Transport Minister Hatta Radjasa pledged to significantly improve safety standards by 2009 in the wake of the accidents.
Radjasa said his office has devised a "roadmap" that included improving air traffic control systems and runways at airports and expertise of aviation sector staff.
He also pledged to swiftly hand down sanctions for breaches of safety regulations and to make public reports into serious accidents.
The minister promised to release the voice box recorder on last month's ill-fated Garuda plane once a final report into the cause of the accident was completed.
Radjasa said Indonesia needed private-sector assistance in upgrading transport infrastructure, with most Indonesian planes about 20 years old and railway tracks that dated back to the Dutch colonial era.
He said the government plans to increase the transport budget by 50 percent.
"We believe and understand that safety and security are two of the most important factors in any transport sector," he told reporters.
Indonesia, an archipelago nation of more than 17,000 islands, relies largely on air transportation.
Deregulation of the industry in 1997 gave rise to a rapid growth in air travel, triggering price wars and, experts say, compromising safety standards in the drive for profit. - AFP/ir
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