Laos crash turns spotlight on safety amid Asia's aviation
boom
Workers retrieve a section of a Lion Air
Boeing 737 which crashed in Bali, April 17, 2013. Dozens were injured but there
were no fatalities.
(CNN) -- As air crash investigators
pick over the wreckage of flight QV301 -- the Lao Airlines plane that crashed in
bad weather on Tuesday with 50 people on board -- concerns over air safety are
growing as the number of flights in South East Asia increases.
A steep
rise in air traffic in countries like Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia -- fueled by a
boom in tourism -- means domestic air regulators are having to contend with
creaking infrastructure and a lack of experience in maintaining internationally
recognized standards.
Laos has a patchy record on air safety, logging 30
fatal air accidents since the 1950s according to the Aviation Safety Network,
though data shows things have started to improve in the past decade.
The
story in other emerging markets in South East Asia tells a similar
story.
Both the U.S. State Department and Britain's Foreign and
Commonwealth Office have issued travel warnings directly related to the aviation
industry in Myanmar -- also known as Burma -- following an incident in 2012,
when an Air Bagan plane carrying more than 60 passengers crashed on Christmas
Day.
Asiana 214's fateful last seconds A closer look at plane's
evacuation
The State Department has warned travelers to keep in mind
Myanmar's sometimes shadowy record regarding its civil aviation report
card.
"The safety records of Burma's domestic airlines are not open to
the public, nor is public information available concerning the Burma
government's oversight of domestic airlines," it says on its website.
But
Myanmar aims to change that by setting its sights on the release of a national
civil aviation policy to prepare for the traffic boom that threatens to
overwhelm its inadequate air transport infrastructure.
Government forecasts
predict annual visitors to rise to six million in 2017 from its current 1.5
million annually, and its fast growing airline industry has received
applications from four airlines owned by Burmese nationals, adding to the seven
domestic carriers currently.
Shukor Yusof, an aviation analyst with
ratings agency Standard and Poor's, said standards differed dramatically across
the South East Asian region.
"It varies from country to country and
airline to airline. In first world countries, Singapore Hong Kong and Malaysia,
there are few concerns about the safety of aviation because they've had a long
track record," Yusof told CNN.
"But then you have developing markets in
Indonesia and Indochina -- and Myanmar is another country which is up and coming
-- where it's really up to the operators to keep abreast with different
maintenance and training requirements.
"Increasingly with the growth of
low-cost airlines in the region, there will be issues surrounding safety
especially in countries that are well known for safety."
The growth of
discount carriers in Indonesia is phenomenal -- they are actually driving the
market in the whole region
Shukor Yusof
He said infrastructure in
Myanmar would be under strain if it didn't keep pace with the growth of the
market. Overcrowding is already an issue in Myanmar where of the 600,000 people
who visited Myanmar by air last year, 500,000 arrived in Yangon, its former
capital. according to industry reports.
In August this year, Myanmar's
Department of Civil Aviation announced plans to improve and expand Yangon
International Airport and Mandalay International Airport, as well to develop the
new Hanthawaddy International Airport 50 miles (80 km) north of
Yangon.
"The equipment and facilities in Myanmar are quite old and with
the rise of tourism they really need to get up to speed and get foreign experts
to come in and help develop that market as quickly as they can," Yusof
said.
"We are not seeing that happen as swiftly as we'd like to."
He
said Indonesia was the real emerging market in the South East Asian aviation
industry, but it also needed to catch up with respect to infrastructure
requirements.
"The growth of discount carriers in Indonesia is phenomenal
-- they are actually driving the market in the whole region but investment in
infrastructure and airports and technology is not keeping pace with the growth
of aviation economics in that country.
"The story is the same all over
Indochina excluding Thailand, of course. In places like Laos, Cambodia and
Myanmar, they need to do more than simply open the doors to tourism.
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