Adam Air Pilots Forgot to Fly Plane While Fixing Nav Problem

Wall Street Journal:

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Report Finds Faulty System Caused 2007 Adam Air Crash
By TOM WRIGHT
March 25, 2008 8:19 a.m.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- The Adam SkyConnections Airlines flight which crashed on New Year's Day 2007, killing all 107 people on board, was caused by a navigational systems error that distracted the pilots from the job of flying the plane, the Indonesian government said in a report published Tuesday.

"The cockpit voice recorder revealed that both pilots were concerned about navigational problems and subsequently became engrossed with troubleshooting … with minimal regard for other flight requirements," the government report found. The Adam Air plane, a Boeing 737-400, crashed in to the sea off the coast of Sulawesi, an island northeast of Jakarta.

The unusually blunt and detailed report is the latest evidence that Indonesia's government is taking safety more seriously after a report in November by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations body that sets global standards for the industry, lambasted the nation's inadequate regulation of airline operators. Both the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and the European Commission have downgraded Indonesia's safety record in the past 12 months, meaning the nation's carriers are banned from flying to either the U.S. or Europe. [Full Article]

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