Original subtitles

Where's Adam direct to?

My God, he's flying north.

A Boeing 737 is badly off course.

Adam 574, confirm our position please.

The crew struggles to get the plane back on track.

This is crazy!

They're lost in a violent storm...

when their plane starts rolling over.

Pull up! Pull up!

The lives of 102 people are at risk.

Adam 574, Ujung control.

Then, mysteriously, Adam Air Flight 574

disappears without a trace.

Mayday! Mayday!

January the 1st, 2007.

Surabaya, Indonesia.

It's New Year's Day.

There are celebrations throughout the country.

Surabaya's airport is bustling.

And not just because of the holidays.

Indonesia is experiencing a boom of budget airlines.

Many people are taking advantage of the cheaper fares.

For the average Indonesian,

it meant that the explosion of low cost carriers

made it much more possible

to actually get on a plane and fly.

One of those new airlines is Adam Air.

Good afternoon, Departure. This is Adam 574.

Adam 574, this is Ground Control. Go ahead.

Adam Air was successful because it provided

a fresh image to the industry.

I mean, they came in with, you know, bright colors.

Their airplanes were painted in fantastic orange.

The crew was in flashy uniforms,

you know, they had everything right going for them.

Captain Refri Widodo

has been flying with Adam Air for six months.

Today, he's in command of Flight 574,

a short domestic flight.

His co-pilot, Yoga Susanto, has been with the airline

for almost a year and a half.

Before the discount travel boom, many passengers

wouldn't have been able to afford this flight.

More and more people were able to fly,

could afford the tickets.

And they didn't care too much about...

the services offered simply because they just were

intent on getting from point A to point B as cheaply as possible.

There are 96 passengers

and six crew members on today's flight.

Controllers at the airport

are busy juggling planes.

Adam 574 is cleared for takeoff.

- Eighty knots. - Check.

V1.

Rotate.

Today's flight is a routine two-hour hop...

from Surabaya, on the island of Java,

to Manado on the island of Sulawesi,

almost 1700 km northeast.

It's the beginning of the rainy season.

The weather is unpredictable.

Forecasters are expecting fierce storms.

Captain Widodo is aware

that there may be bad weather ahead.

Turn right direct to Fando and climb to flight level three-three-zero.

Roger, turn right direct to Fando

and climb to flight level three-three-zero.

Adam 574.

Minutes after takeoff, the crew turns on the autopilot.

The flight computer will fly the plane

and navigate it along a preplanned route to Manado.

Now passing flight level two-two-zero,

climbing to flight level three-three-zero.

Roger, Adam 574. Track direct to DIOLA.

Confirmed. Tracking direct to DIOLA, Adam 574.

22,000 feet below,

air traffic controllers track the flight's progress on radar,

and confirm that it's on course.

The plane is beginning to experience some turbulence.

Less than half an hour into the flight,

Air Traffic Controllers notice something out of the ordinary.

Where's Adam direct to?

My God, he's flying north.

Flight 574 has flown off-course

heading into a violent storm.

Air traffic controllers don't know why.

Yes. Mm-hmm.

Onboard the plane, the pilots try to understand

how far they have drifted off-course.

The IRS.

Twenty-eight is the difference.

And try to fix the problem

with the computerized system that handles navigation.

Fasten your seat belt.

May I have your attention.

This is your Captain speaking.

We are about to experience some turbulence.

Could all the passengers return to their seats?

Controllers on the ground try to get

Flight 574 back on course,

giving them directions to their next assigned waypoint called DIOLA.

Adam Air 574,

maintain three-five-zero direct to DIOLA.

Confirmed, flight level three-five-zero

direct to DIOLA, Adam 574.

But to get there,

Flight 574 must pass through a severe storm.

One hundred and thirty-seven kilometer an hour winds

beat on the plane's hull.

It's pounded by hail and rain.

The weather is making it hard to see.

The crew is not just concerned with the weather.

They're still also trying to understand the problem

with the plane's navigation system.

This is messed up.

Getting lost over the ocean is everyone's worry.

Because when you lose your navigational instruments

or you lose trust of your navigation instruments,

what do you do?

Co-pilot Susanto consults the aircraft's handbook.

It's starting to fly like a bamboo ship.

Captain Widodo doesn't know where he is.

He needs directions.

Confirm our position.

Adam 574, confirm our position please.

Roger, Adam 574,

position is one-two-five miles,

Mike Kilo Sierra,

crossing radial three-zero-seven

Mike Kilo Sierra.

The weather in Mike Kilo Sierra isn't good.

The storm is growing worse.

This is crazy.

We're going to get lost if it stays like this.

Captain Widodo wants to take over

navigation of the plane from the flight computer.

Okay. Put the IRS on attitude.

But suddenly, a warning.

The autopilot has disengaged completely.

Then, many of Susanto's computerized instruments

go blank.

The crew doesn't notice that their plane is rolling over.

Flight 574 is banking at a dangerous angle.

Okay, enter this.

Bank angle! Bank angle!

Bank angle!

If it rolls too far over,

it would send the plane and the 102 people on board

into a fatal downward spiral.

Okay, put it back on Nav again.

Put it back on Nav again!

Put it on Nav again!

Captain Widodo wants to reengage

the flight computer's navigation system.

The plane is still rolling,

and now its nose has started to point downward.

Sink rate!

Another alarm tells the pilots that they are entering a steep descent.

Don't turn it. This is our heading!

- Pull up! - Go up.

- Pull up! - Go up.

Adam 574, Ujung Control.

Adam 574, Ujung Control.

Adam 574, radar service terminated.

Please contact Ujung Control at one-two-eight decimal one.

Inexplicably, Flight 574 has disappeared.

News of Adam Air Flight 574's disappearance spreads quickly.

The Indonesian government starts mobilizing

search and rescue teams to find it.

First Air Marshal Eddy Suyanto

will coordinate the search and rescue.

On the 1st of January, 2007,

I received a verbal notification

from the Vice Assistant Operation Head of Air Force

that Adam Air had not landed in Manado.

Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee,

or NTSC, is also notified.

The NTSC is responsible

for finding out what went wrong in any plane crash.

Frans Wenas is in charge of investigating Adam Air 574.

The first steps that we take when there was an accident

or serious incident...

we will find all the resources that we have

and get the team together

before we dispatch to the area.

Working with air traffic control,

the searchers try to pinpoint

the last recorded location of Flight 574.

I received the report

that Adam Air was lost from the radar

in the Majene Sea.

The plane was last detected by radar

as it was crossing the sea,

about halfway through its intended journey.

Okay. So...

right around here.

But the plane could have flown

hundreds of kilometers after that signal was received.

It's impossible to pinpoint the exact location.

When the aircraft went missing,

it was a bit of a shock for everybody

because in this day and age, nobody expects an aircraft to go missing.

Without a specific location,

searchers try to figure out how large an area to scan.

Since they know how much fuel was on board,

investigators can calculate

how far the plane could have flown

since it was last detected.

If this is the last radar hit...

they didn't have enough fuel to fly any further than this.

Hmm.

More than 3,000 people

are sent out to look for the plane.

The Indonesians are joined by a US Navy vessel.

But the area they have to search is the size of Ireland.

The teams don't even know

whether to look on land or on water.

And as long as there was no definitive word,

hope remained.

Twelve hours pass without any confirmed sightings.

And then, friends and relatives' hopes

are raised with news that survivors have been found.

A new report came in

saying that they had found the Adam Air wreckage

in the mountainous area of Polewali.

With 100 victims and 12 survivors still alive.

Rescue teams hurry to the island of Sulawesi,

hoping to return survivors to their families.

They also hoped to discover

what went wrong on board the plane.

When news broke that some people might have survived the crash,

the already incredibly stressed

and emotional families of the survivors

thought, "Whoa, maybe there is a chance.

"Maybe my wife, cousin, husband, brother, has survived."

But when the first officials get there,

they find that these survivors are not from the flight at all.

They were ferry survivors

not airplane survivors.

They're from a ship that sank in another storm

near where Flight 574 is thought to have crashed.

Now the rescue teams are back to square one.

It let people's hopes up.

And people flocked to Makassar

and they were finding ways how to get to the crash site,

only to find that it's not there.

For family members, it's a bitter disappointment.

We were ashamed because the information

was already spread all over before we verified it.

Our government was embarrassed

that we publicized that information.

It's been a week since the crash.

With each passing day,

the chance of finding any survivors grows smaller.

There was still no clear picture

of exactly where the plane had crashed

and how it had gone down and why it had gone down.

Wenas needs to locate the wreckage

as soon as possible.

Most of all, he needs the two black boxes

that record conversations in the cockpit and flight data.

There are beacons attached to the boxes,

but they only have a 30-day battery life.

Nine days after the crash of Adam Air Flight 574,

a fisherman finds what he thinks might be part of an airplane,

300 meters off the coast of Sulawesi.

The piece is taken to an Indonesian Air Force base for analysis.

Frans Wenas quickly identifies

that it is part of a right elevator.

He examines it to see if it belongs to Adam Air 574.

We checked with the serial numbers,

we checked with the part numbers...

The numbers match.

So we are definitely sure that it is from the aircraft.

The finding confirms that Flight 574 crashed at sea.

The team can now narrow down

its search to the area where the elevator was found.

Since the accident involves an American-made plane,

the US National Transportation Safety Board

joins the investigation.

And they send structural engineer

Clint Crookshanks to Indonesia.

We started working with the NTSC to...

to look at radar data, uh,

air traffic transmissions, weather data,

trying to bring all that information together

to find the airplane.

The water that investigators plan

to search for wreckage is 6,500 feet deep.

Much too deep to send down divers.

It was quite deep water, deeper than, uh,

than we're normally used to recovering airplanes from.

The Indonesian government wants Adam Air

to pay for the salvage operation.

Investigators meet with representatives of the airline.

It is going to be expensive.

We need to hire contractors to go down that far.

Adam Air felt that its responsibility only went so far.

The government and most of public opinion

believe that Adam Air's responsibility

was actually almost total,

because they were the owners of the airline.

The airline refuses to pay for the salvage,

triggering a lengthy negotiation.

This is not good news for Frans Wenas.

Unless someone puts up the money

to search the seabed for wreckage,

the mystery of Flight 574 will not be solved.

It is also a blow to the families of the victims.

The families obviously wanted to know

what had happened to their loved ones.

And they did want the government and Adam Air to combine

to get the flight data recorders out of the water.

As the investigation stalls, public anger grows.

People were becoming more and more critical

of Adam Air and the way it was being run.

But then, after seven months of negotiating...

This is good news.

Thank you.

...Adam Air agrees to help pay for the salvage.

Phoenix International,

an American company specializing in deep-water salvage,

starts the operation on August the 24th.

But the time they've lost has had a serious consequence.

Although they have a fix on the location of the crash,

the locator beacons attached to the black boxes

have gone dead.

If the black boxes are not found,

it will be a mystery until today.

Without the beacon, finding two small boxes

among the wreckage will be a huge challenge.

To make matters worse,

Adam Air has only put up enough money for one week of searching.

So it was like, "Go out there.

"If you don't find anything in seven days, you're done."

After locating debris with sonar,

an unmanned, remote controlled submarine

is sent down to look for the black boxes.

All right. How are we doing?

We dove on one location first.

We got to that GPS location. There was nothing there.

Pull up quadrant three.

So we sat down and decided we'd do a grid search about that point.

And so we did a very methodical search.

Okay, three degrees.

All right. Slow, slow.

We're coming up on somethin'.

We started picking up small, lightweight pieces of airplane wreckage.

Things like life vests, seat trays,

uh, light bits of metal.

Oh, my God. This is it.

Investigators get their first look at the wreckage.

This plane is ripped apart.

The state of the wreckage illustrates

just how violent this plane crash was.

The little pieces of wreckage didn't tell us anything

about the cause of the crash.

They did tell us, however, that the airplane hit the water

at a very high rate of speed.

This was the most fragmented airplane that I have ever seen.

Only two days into the operation,

Crookshanks spots something.

All right. Stop. Rotate back five degrees.

I noticed on the left side of the video screen

something that appeared to be orange,

and I instructed the ROV operator to take a closer look at it.

That's it. That's... that's it. Okay.

Once we got over there, we realized that, "Yeah,"

that's... this, in fact, was the FDR.

The plane's Flight Data Recorder has been found.

All right. Good work, Joe. Let's get this up.

We were very excited that we had seen

and recovered one of the boxes.

Investigators soon find

the cockpit voice recorder nearby.

All right. Stop! That's it.

Their week is up.

The salvage operation is over.

Investigators now hope that they have

all the clues they need to solve this accident.

The black boxes is the only source

for the evidence that we have

because we don't have the wreckage,

we don't have the witnesses.

But the boxes have been lying

on the bottom of the sea for almost eight months.

They could be damaged beyond repair.

They may not yield any information at all.

The black boxes from Adam Air Flight 574

are taken to the National Transportation Safety Board

in Washington, D.C.

Investigators think the labs there are the best bet

at salvaging any possible information.

If an FDR is found in salt water,

it needs to be washed in fresh water

and then contained in water

the entire time until it makes it to our lab.

Salt and air together

create a chemical reaction that results in rust.

The rust can damage

the electronic components in the recorders.

Keeping them submerged in freshwater

delays that reaction.

The importance of having the data

depends on the circumstances of the accident.

If you're able to recover wreckage,

and other parts to investigate,

then you don't necessarily need to rely on the data.

For this particular accident,

since the wreckage was going to stay at the bottom of the ocean,

it was essential that we had data from the recorders.

Frans Wenas also makes the trip to the United States.

The FDR and the CVR,

when they were recovered from the bottom of the sea,

the cases were actually 50 to 60 percent damaged.

We thought there might be an issue in recovering the data.

It wasn't as damaged as many others we've seen.

So we were fairly confident

if there was data recorded,

we would be able to get the data off.

Technicians begin the painstaking process

of retrieving the information.

The job is a multinational effort.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau

was requested to assist.

We have an excellent relationship

with the NTSB folk.

And so our flight recorder specialist

went to the United States and worked alongside the NTSB.

The electronic components containing the data

are carefully removed and dried.

Then the information is uploaded onto a computer.

As the delicate procedure

of recovering the data from both recorders progresses,

investigators are aware that they have an additional concern.

One problem that we ran up against

in this investigation is,

the maintenance records indicated that

the flight data recorder

was written up as being inoperable

in the weeks prior to the crash.

We were concerned with that...

in that if we found the FDR,

it may not have recorded anything.

Investigators keep their fingers crossed.

We've got it all. It's all there.

I was confident once we found out

that we had 100% of the data,

that we would be able to solve this accident.

The two black boxes provide investigators

with the first solid clues

about why Flight 574 fell from the sky.

Good afternoon, Departure. This is Adam 574.

Now passing flight level two-two-zero,

climbing to flight level three-three-zero.

Roger, Adam 574, track direct to DIOLA.

Confirmed. Tracking direct to DIOLA, Adam 574.

The conversation in the cockpit

tells investigators that the crew knew

that the plane's navigation system

was sending them off course...

The IRS...

Twenty-eight is the difference.

They're drifting.

...and that they were preoccupied

with fixing that problem.

This is messed up.

Where's Adam direct to?

My God, he's flying north.

Adam Air 574, maintain three-five-zero,

direct to DIOLA.

Confirmed. Flight level three-five-zero,

direct to DIOLA, Adam 574.

To get from one way point to the next,

the flight computer always has to know

the plane's exact location.

That information comes from a component called the IRS,

or inertial reference system.

It tracks every adjustment to the plane's course

to calculate its exact position.

It then feeds that information to the autopilot.

The autopilot needs to know,

where the aircraft is and where it needs to go.

Now the autopilot takes those data from the IRS

in terms of height, heading, and speed.

But for the system to keep track

of the plane's heading,

it has to know where the plane started.

The IRS has to be calibrated before takeoff.

Usually, the crew will enter the coordinates of the gate

as the starting point for the computer to track.

Investigators wonder if the IRS guided the plane off course

because the wrong initial coordinates were entered.

Frans, we just got this.

They check this by looking at information

from the flight data recorder.

- The numbers are fine when they're on the ground. - Yes. Yes.

The data confirms the IRS was calibrated

before Adam Air Flight 574 took off.

- This is where it begins. - That's right.

But for some reason,

the IRS began to send the plane off-course

almost as soon as the flight got in the air.

It just gets worse and worse.

I have something else I'd like to show you.

Its maintenance logs.

Crookshanks and Wenas look at the maintenance history

of the IRS system that was on board Flight 574.

As you can tell, there's more than 100 write-ups here.

Look at this.

Same unit.

Same problem.

The history shows

that there had been numerous complaints

about the plane's navigation system

over the past three months.

Again and again.

Investigators wonder why the airline

didn't fix the problem.

In the case of the IRS of this aircraft, you know,

that unit should have been taken out

and sent to maintenance for calibration or repairs.

Investigators discover that when pilots complained

about a faulty IRS unit,

the airline didn't fix it properly.

They would either swap it with a unit from another plane,

or often, they would only do a basic cleaning

of the malfunctioning unit.

They just pull out the connectors,

spray it with some lubricant cleaners,

then put it back on.

Did some ground tests, and then just put,

"Ground test okay," on the maintenance log.

Since the IRS is such a vital piece of equipment,

this is contrary to all recommended repair policies.

Investigators listen to the cockpit voice recorder...

hoping to discover how the malfunctioning IRS

contributed to the crash.

This is crazy.

We're going to get lost if it stays like this.

Don't turn it. This is our heading.

Pull up! Pull up!

But nothing they hear leads them to believe

that an IRS malfunction alone

could have caused the plane to crash.

You have a failure in one system of the airplane,

it shouldn't cause an accident.

Investigators now wonder if the severe storm

Flight 574 flew into

somehow played a role in this crash.

This is messed up.

This is really messed up.

It's starting to fly like a bamboo ship.

Confirm our position.

Weather is a well-known cause

of airline accidents.

It can wreak havoc with the airplane

and disorient pilots.

In 1977, a Southern Airways DC-9

flew into a violent storm near New Hope, Georgia.

Our left engine just cut out.

Hail clogged the engines.

They tore themselves apart.

Got the other engine going too.

Brace for impact!

The plane slammed into the small town...

and 72 people were killed.

In order to determine

if weather was a factor in the Adam Air crash,

investigators need a more complete picture

of what happened on board the flight.

They want to know everything the crew did and said

from the time they discovered that they were off-course,

to the time they hit the water.

To do this, they combine the data from the two black boxes

to create a computer simulation of the flight.

That gives us fairly close to the possibility

of what really happened with the aircraft.

Investigators returned to Jakarta

to study the simulation.

The weather in Mike Kilo Sierra isn't good.

This is crazy.

We're going to get lost if it stays like this.

They can see that throughout most of the flight,

the computer was navigating the plane.

But since the flight computer

was sending the plane off-course,

the captain decided to navigate the plane himself.

Okay, put the IRS in attitude.

Co-pilot Susanto switched the navigation system

to a mode that would keep the plane flying straight and level.

Captain Widodo could now change his course.

This is where they switch from NAV to Attitude.

Switching from one mode to the other

forces some computerized gauges

to temporarily go blank while they reset.

One is the ADI, or artificial horizon,

which tells the crew if the plane is flying level.

ADI goes off and stays off.

There was also another,

much more serious consequence to the switch.

That's when the plane starts its right roll.

The autopilot disengaged when they consciously selected

from the NAV mode to the attitude mode.

And then the aircraft commenced

an almost imperceptible roll to the right

of around about one degree per second.

The captain missed a crucial step

when he switched his flight computer

from one mode to the other.

Quick reference sample, please.

He should have flown his plane straight and level.

while the computer adjusted to the new setting.

"Maintain straight and level constant airspeed flight

"until attitude displays recover.

"Approximately 30 seconds."

It's in the manual.

Any pilot who is trained and qualified

on a Boeing 737-400

is regarded to have a sufficient knowledge

that whenever they switch the NAV mode to attitude,

they have to...

maintain wings level for 30 seconds.

But neither of the pilots did that.

It's an oversight with grave consequences.

Without that step, the autopilot disengages completely.

The flight computer did send out a warning

when that happened.

But the warning was ignored.

The crew didn't seem to notice

that the auto pilot was no longer flying the plane.

And it only took seconds

for that to become a very serious problem.

The data tells investigators that this plane

had a natural tendency to roll to the right.

Old planes, like old cars don't always go straight.

Throughout the flight,

the autopilot compensated for that

by raising the aileron on the plane's left wing.

An aileron is a moveable flap on the wing

that controls how much the plane rolls to the left and right.

But once the autopilot disengaged,

it stopped compensating,

and the ailerons went back to a neutral position.

That allowed the plane to revert to its tendency to roll to the right.

And they don't even notice.

At this point, the plane was rolling

at a rate of one degree per second.

Focused on their faulty navigation system,

and with thick clouds obscuring the horizon,

the pilots had no idea that their plane was dipping.

It's not uncommon for pilots to get disoriented in this way.

Your body will start to fool you.

Your senses will start sending you

false information or false senses.

You might think that you are actually going

straight and level when you're actually rolling slowly

to the right or to the left.

The 737 is programmed to issue a warning

when it rolls past 35 degrees.

Bank angle.

Bank angle.

Bank angle.

The Flight Data Recorder shows investigators

that in response to that alert,

Captain Widodo did attempt to level the plane.

They get an aural warning from the airplane

that says, "Hey, bank angle, bank angle,"

and at that point

they made some small inputs

to the controls, but they didn't...

they didn't fly the airplane.

Believing that the autopilot would keep the plane level,

Widodo soon turned his attention back to the problematic IRS.

When the pilot is engrossed

with troubleshooting of the IRS,

their ability to pay attention

for the other tasks is reduced further.

This IRS anomalies has become

the only priority at the moment.

Usually you would say one pilot deals with the system issue,

the other pilot flies the airplane.

They were both dealing with this system issue,

and totally focused on the issue,

so they never saw what was happening.

This is not the first accident, uh,

involving what we would call spatial disorientation.

It was almost three years earlier to the day

that another flight, Flash Airlines 604,

taking off over the Red Sea had a similar fate.

See what the aircraft just did?

Distracted by a malfunctioning component

in the cockpit, the captain may have become disoriented.

Autopilot! Autopilot!

Like the Adam Air flight, the captain's attention

was focused on his flight computer.

And like the Adam Air flight,

his plane began rolling dangerously to the right.

Investigators concluded that without any external references,

the captain simply couldn't tell

that his plane was falling from the sky.

Tragically, um,

just because a, uh,

there is an initial reference system failure

or, let's say, in another accident,

there might be an engine failure,

uh, does not mean that an aircraft has to crash.

It's 60 degrees now, and there's no attempt at recovery.

Don't turn it! This is our heading.

- Pull up! Pull up! - Pull up.

Investigators can see

that when Captain Widodo does take action,

he makes the situation much worse.

With his plane still banked drastically to the right,

Captain Widodo should have leveled his wings,

and then pulled his nose up.

No!

He did the opposite.

He began pulling back on his control column

before his wings were level.

That forced the plane into a tight spiral dive.

Basically it rolled

and it just kept rolling until it almost went inverted

and... and just fell.

It kind of fell out of the sky

once it got to a point where it wasn't

flying like a normal airplane should.

The aircraft was descending at nearly 900 kms an hour,

uh, at a vertical speed, at times

reaching in excess of 21,000 feet per minute.

That's almost the speed of sound

and more than 150 kms an hour faster

than this plane was designed to withstand.

- Pull up. - It's rolling over rapid descent.

Pull up.

- Pull up. - They can't recover now.

At that speed, the plane is no longer able to hold itself together.

And that sound...

That's the sound of the plane coming apart.

The black boxes have revealed

how Flight 574 crashed.

But they also raise crucial questions.

It's just one error after another.

There was ample opportunity,

ample time for the pilots to correct the situation.

The investigators have come to a disturbing conclusion.

The only mechanical failure was with the plane's navigation system.

And that shouldn't have caused the crash.

The more significant failures were human.

Okay, put the IRS in Attitude.

Bank angle!

But why should qualified pilots

make these disastrous mistakes?

Don't turn it! This is our heading!

To find these answers,

investigators must look at the airline itself.

This one accident will raise serious questions

about Indonesia's entire aviation industry.

The investigators turn their attention

from the actions of the pilots on Flight 574

to the airline that employed them, Adam Air.

They meet with the owners.

Frans Wenas.

Adam Air was founded in 2002

by a wealthy businesswoman named Sandra Ang.

Ang named the airline after her son, Adam,

whom she also appointed as the company's president.

We need to know more about your training program.

The investigators interview Adam Air pilots.

Did the airline provide any training

on recovery procedures in the event of an IRS failure?

No?

They want to find out more about

how the airline trained its flight crews.

What about recovery techniques?

IRS troubleshooting?

No?

What they uncover is disturbing.

We could not find any evidence

that the pilot

was properly trained

when they have a sudden disengaging autopilot,

or when they're flying with the IRS failure.

Thank you, gentlemen, for your time.

As they dig deeper,

investigators find an airline plagued with safety issues.

Eleven months before the Adam Air crash

in February 2006,

another Adam Air plane, Flight 782

flew off-course the same way as Flight 574.

That crew was also getting faulty navigation data,

but they couldn't even reach controllers on the radio.

They couldn't get directions.

They were badly lost for three hours.

The crew was trying to find where they were,

the ATC was trying to find where they were,

and they were over the water.

Like Flight 574, they had a malfunctioning IRS.

In the end, the plane landed

almost 500 kms south of where it should have been.

They just continued until they found an island

and it had an airport. And then they said, "Okay, we have to land there,

"otherwise we don't know where we're gonna go."

And they landed, and they didn't know

exactly where they were until they landed.

Six months after Flight 574,

the European Commission banned all Indonesian airlines

from flying to Europe.

That sent a very strong message to the whole world that we,

the European Union, believe

that all Indonesian airlines are unsafe,

and you should not fly on them.

Then, in March 2008,

there's another accident involving Adam Air,

this time in the city of Batam.

The airplane slewed off the runway,

came to rest on the side.

The evacuation was a bit strange.

No slides were deployed,

and that was the final accident.

And after that, I think everybody said

"Enough is enough," you know?

People who did care, people who were wanting

to shake up the industry,

and reform it and improve it,

were horrified that the situation

had been so bad within Adam Air,

and that the authorities had allowed

such a situation to continue and deteriorate.

Immediately after the crash in Batam,

the Indonesian government suspended, and then

ultimately revoked Adam Air's license to operate.

It is also apparent that Adam Air

isn't the only Indonesian airline with problems.

Prior to the Adam Air crash,

Indonesia experienced a bad crash

about every year to 18 months.

Many of those accidents involved the discount carriers

that the government had allowed to thrive.

More than 50 such airlines were in operation

at the time of the Adam Air crash.

The problem, though, was that

this expansion occurred in a way

that was not properly monitored,

not properly regulated by the government.

Thousands and thousands of people are being employed

to work for airlines when they just

don't have the experience to do so,

and are not being adequately trained,

as the investigation report into the Adam Air crash demonstrated.

Indonesia's poor safety record

forces the government to take steps to improve

airline safety throughout the country.

It begins rating airlines on safety,

and grounds those that don't comply.

There have been fewer fatal incidents

since the reforms.

But a year and a half after it was put in place,

the European Union's ban

on Indonesian airlines was still in effect.

Those familiar with Indonesian aviation

think the reforms could go even further.

So that we have no Adam Airs, we have no more companies that

that cut costs too much.

And gives all these extra risks to the public,

because, that's not what the public should receive.

The public should receive

a reliable and safe means of air transportation.