I regularly travel to Jakarta - and I try to avoid the low-cost Indonesian airlines like Lion Air because of their very poor safety record. For example, AirAsia didn't think it needed to give its pilots upset recovery training until flight 8501 crashed:
In the wake of the Air France crash, the [Australian] Civil Aviation Safety Authority required that pilots receive upset recovery training, although it was long a standard practice at Australian airlines. The AirAsia Indonesia crash report said Indonesia's Director General of Civil Aviation has no such requirement and neither of the pilots were trained in upset recovery on an A320.
All things considered -- and remember, these airlines are flying in poor countries where a lot of the infra for air traffic control, airports etc is not up to scratch -- AirAsia has a reasonable safety record: the only major crash suffered by the entire group (not just Indonesia AirAsia) was Flight 8501:
Last I checked, AA uses Lufthansa Technik for its maintenance, so there's good third-party oversight. You can't say the same for Lion Air, which seems to write off its planes on an alarmingly regular basis:
I’ve flown multiple times within Vietnam and in Thailand with AirAsia, always a great experience. I think it’s the Australian-run branch though.
Edit: oh, ok, did some research. There’s no Australian Air Asia, no idea where I picked that up.
Leaving it here in case anyone had the same misunderstanding.
Vietnam Airlines has the most aggressive flight profiles I have ever ridden on. On my two domestic flights they took off and landed like it was roller coaster.
It's interesting that my gut reaction here is that Lion Air probably wasn't at fault, and that it had something to do with the plane. Otherwise if Lion Air messed up AGAIN a few years later, then that's just unthinkable.
Airplane crashes almost never have single fault. It's always something like "modest maintenance issue combined with incorrect pilot action combined with unusual weather pattern". Ultimately the pilot takes the blame in the situation, but the actual problem is systemic.
"human errors" is rather vague. Does that include pilots violating standards? Bad guidance from ATC? Making a poor call during an emergency? Letting a plane go into service with maintenance violations? Doing maintenance incorrectly?
In the wake of the Air France crash, the [Australian] Civil Aviation Safety Authority required that pilots receive upset recovery training, although it was long a standard practice at Australian airlines. The AirAsia Indonesia crash report said Indonesia's Director General of Civil Aviation has no such requirement and neither of the pilots were trained in upset recovery on an A320.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/why-the-airasia-cr...