QZ8501: AirAsia Indonesia admits 'administrative negligence'
Sunu Widyatmoko, the CEO of AirAsia Indonesia has admitted that the airline committed "administrative negligence" in requesting a change in its Surabaya-Singapore flight schedule.
He said that the company had only informed the Indonesian transport ministry verbally when requesting to change their flight schedule to Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, reported Jakarta Post.
Originally they were permitted to only to fly the Surabaya-Singapore route on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
He was speaking at the first hearing with the House of Representatives Commission V on transportation on Tuesday (Jan 13).
“I admitted that administrative negligence occurred when requesting the change in flight schedule, as the verbal information failed to reach the ministry...We will take this as a correction.” - Sunu Widyatmoko
Sunu however, said that the allegations that the AirAsia pilot did not receive a weather report from the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) before flying to Singapore on Dec 2 were untrue.
He said that the airline has an "e-mail blast system" that has updated weather information every six hours for pilots.
The director general of air transport Djoko Murjatmodjo had earlier said that the ill-fated AirAsia flight QZ8501 did not have the the proper permit to fly the route when it crashed into the Java Sea last year.
AirAsia flight QZ8501 crashed into the Java Sea with 162 people on board, sparking a multinational search effort which is still ongoing.
On Tuesday (Jan 13), the cockpit voice recorder was retrieved by divers.
The flight data recorder was recovered on Monday.
Source: Jakarta Post
Related report:
AirAsia QZ8501 flight schedule wasn't approved, says Indonesia
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