Safety vs. Affordability: The Transportation Tradeoff In Indonesia

"Last year, there was an aircraft incident recorded every nine to 10 days - planes that crashed, almost crashed, missed the runway, were forced into emergency landing or had technical problems."

"According to the Transport Society, hundreds of millions of US dollars are needed to bring infrastructure up to standard. The government denies it is risking safety, but does admit that it needs more money. Not everyone, though, agrees that the solution is to bring in the private sector. Air and sea transportation have already been partly liberalised. The result is a mushrooming of cheaper, budget carriers, which now account for around two-thirds of the incidents reported on scheduled flights."

That is something that worries Bambang Sustanono. 'Our concern is that they cut costs by simplifying safety procedures,' he said."