Indonesia’s air safety regime is not only minimal, but constantly degraded by high levels of recruitment of its more experienced pilots by the rich and rapidly expanding carriers of the Middle East.

This sees pilots being promoted to captain in jets the size of the 737 that crashed and burned at Yogjakarta many years sooner, and with considerably less first officer experience, than in most parts of the world.

It isn’t known if this was a factor in this crash, but it is regarded as a serious overall problem for Indonesian aviation by foreign safety experts who have a close understanding of the human skills factors in other recent disasters in the country.