New Year's Day is a good time for resolutions for the year ahead. For aviation safety, 2007 did not get off to a good start. An Indonesian airliner operated by the low-cost carrier Adamair went missing during a domestic flight on January 1. The Boeing 737 had crashed into the sea killing all 102 passengers.
Fast forward nine months and aviation safety is in the news again, with the crash of a Thai low-cost airline, One-Two-Go, in Phuket.
In the intervening months, there have been 30 other fatal accidents killing a further 520 people, according to US crash-watchers, the Aviation Safety Network. Last year there were 27 fatal crashes, the lowest figure for a decade. Many had been predicting an even safer year for 2007, despite traffic growth.
What has made 2007 a particularly bad year for Australians is that many of the crashes have happened in our region. The horrific fireball that engulfed the Garuda Indonesia 737 at Jogjakarta in March would have made the news in any event, but the presence on board of Australian diplomatic staff and journalists indelibly branded the accident into the national psyche.
To read the full article, click here to go to SMH.com.au
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