Shame revisited, Roy Morgan finds Garuda best international airline in the world
Allow me to express my disbelief and disgust at Roy Morgan announcing that Garuda Indonesia, the national carrier, has been recognised as ‘Best International Airline for January 2012’ according to a recent independent survey of major airlines across the world.
Garuda killed one of my colleagues, Morgan Mellish, the Jakarta correspondent of the Australian Financial Review, on 7 March 2007, when he was burned alive inside one of its Boeing 737s in a crash at Yogyakarta, one of five Australians to die at the hand of an incompetent and negligent pilot whose presence at the controls reflects on the pathetic flight safety standards of the carrier at the time.
The other Australians who died were the diplomat Liz O’Neill, an AusAid official, Allison Sudrajat, and Australian Federal Police officers Mark Scott and Brice Steele.
A Sydney Morning Herald journalist Cynthia Banham was badly injured in the crash. Another 16 people, including one crew member, perished in the disaster.
The evidence presented at the trial and conviction on manslaughter charges of the captain, Marwoto Komar, in 2009, heard that he ignored 15 audible cockpit alarms before touching down on the runway at twice the normal speed without the wings having even been configured for a landing.
His ignored pleas from his co-pilot to go around. He was sentenced to two years jail early that year but his conviction was later quashed by a superior court.
This is the press release issued by Roy Morgan.
(Sydney, 07 March 2012): Garuda Indonesia, Indonesia’s national carrier, has been recognised as ‘Best International Airline for January 2012’ according to a recent independent survey of major airlines across the world.
The Customer Satisfaction survey conducted by research company Roy Morgan, ranked Garuda Indonesia ahead of other leading airlines such as Singapore Airlines, Emirates and Air New Zealand with a monthly satisfaction score of 91 per cent. A total of 3943 respondents were surveyed on how satisfied they were with the airline they used between February 2011 and January 2012.
Bagus Y. Siregar, Senior General Manager Australia/SWP Garuda Indonesia commented: “We are thrilled to receive this award, as it endorses Garuda Indonesia’s transformation and progress towards becoming one of Asia’s leading airlines. This valuable recognition by our Australian customers motivates us even further to deliver the highest standards of service on the ground and in the air.”
The Roy Morgan Customer Satisfaction Award comes after a string of accolades, including the four-star rating by Skytrax, the global benchmark for airline service standards in 2009. Garuda Indonesia was also named the ‘World’s Most Improved Airline’ at the Skytrax World Airline Awards in Hamburg, and Asia’s leading service quality airline by the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) in 2010.
All awards recognise the success of Garuda Indonesia’s Qantum Leap program which includes the revitalisation of its existing fleet and the introduction of The Garuda Indonesia Experience, the carrier’s service concept that offers a uniquely Indonesian level of service on the ground and inflight. Garuda Indonesia will continue to invest in enhancing its service offerings in order to become a five star carrier by 2015.
Whatever Garuda may have done to the interior of its jets and the standards of cabin service that it delivers, it takes a long time to expunge the memory of the many slaughters of passengers conducted by this airline in its bloody, and nasty factual history, and they cannot for this writer be erased by claimed awards for excellence, nor completely exonerated by the poor state of safety regulation, air navigation infrastructure and other excuses offered in mitigation down the years.
Allowing someone as comprehensively unfit to fly as Komar was to be in command of a passenger flight had nothing to do with bad luck or bad weather. It was a gross failure of standards on the part of the airline.
It is true that Garuda has invested in flight standards as well as cabin standards since that dreadful accident, and that is acknowledged and welcomed. But this is far short of the time when the sorrow and hurt of its past misdeeds will have been forgotten and forgiven. Far, far too short a time.
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Surely this is a hoax! Roy Morgan should make all the details of the survey public so that the methodology, particularly the questions and the composition of the 3943 persons claimed to have been surveyed, can be openly tested.
No amount of awards would make me step inside a Garuda aircraft. The Skytrax award system is a bit of a joke in any case. There have been several “highly rated” airlines as per Skytrax that I have flown and never would again.
I think the annual Skytrax survey is possibly skewed heavily to the pointy end custom. Certainly for a peasant like me, flying up the back, very few of the Skytrax awarded airlines I have flown have given anything outstanding in the way of service. Not bad – but not outstanding or meriting any award. Goodness knows what Morgan used as its criteria in this survey re Garuda but it would be interesting, as itfisher says, for it to be made public.
Ben, I know it was a few years ago now, but I’m sorry for the loss of your colleague.
Further to my entry above, I note that Essential Research regularly polls around 1040 respondents to come up with its political polling, whilst Nielsen polls around 1200.
The 3943 given by Morgan sounds more like one of those useless magazine polls about whether you prefer Justin Bieber or Princess Mary of Denmark as your soul mate! I doubt it has any real credibility – Garuda over Air New Zealand? Come on!
Ben,
As a pilot in Indonesia and a Garuda Frequent Flyer I certainly understand and feel to my very core your comments. I share airspace with Komar who is flying 737-300 freighters in the Papua province and I am appalled that he was put in the position to be able to bend one of them following a heavy landing in Wamena.
That said Singapore Airlines suffered a catastrophic accident in Taipei in October 2000 killing 83 of 179 people. That was a terrible accident but Singapore Airlines remains now as it did then a seemingly world class airline that others all look to, you yourself often mention them.
Garuda changed rapidly following the Yogyakarta accident, I arrived in Indonesia just over a year later and in the ensuing 4 years have seen amazing changes. There’s still issues and I would by no stretch of the imagination call them top of the class for safety. But in many aspects I now rate them far, far ahead of the shell that is now Qantas. And I would fly Garuda over JetStar every single day of the week.
We all know airline surveys are mostly crap. This one is really no different, but to be fair it focussed on Customer Satisfaction and having flown Garuda in both Economy and Executive Classes their service beats many airlines, even Air New Zealand in some respects!
Ben, I very much enjoy you blog and are hugely grateful that you are here doing it but the emotions are obviously deep here and it seems a bit out of context.
Not long ago Skytrax was saying that both Virgin Blue and Tiger pre grounding were the same quality level. Clearly they had not interacted their customer “service” centre which uses VOIP phone lines set to a bit rate so low they just give you digital static. Also you don’t need to use the Office of Consumer affairs as your travel agent to fly Virgin.
Kiwikurt,
You make some very important points. But when you lose people you may never forgive or forget and for myself, I’m totally unmoved by preference polling exercises on such issues. I may have failed to make this clear in relation to Garuda 002 but I tried to at the end.
To recap on the last par: It is true that Garuda has invested in flight standards as well as cabin standards since that dreadful accident, and that is acknowledged and welcomed. But this is far short of the time when the sorrow and hurt of its past misdeeds will have been forgotten and forgiven. Far, far too short a time.
Having lost friends and colleagues in accidents I totally understand. I just feel it’s a separate issue that they nevertheless need to be held accountable to. In terms of continuing to improve their flight safety standards.
kiwikurt
I concur with your points and would add that opinion surveys (whether they be about airlines, 10 greatest songs ever, greatest buildings etc) are just that, opinions, and should be given the respective weight they deserve i.e. slim to none. Giving them airtime, whether positive or negative, is not so much journalism as subjective opinion itself. I check this blog for journalistic research on the aviation industry and am disappointed when these sorts of pieces appear.
I can understand the personal emotion Ben may feel in relation to the incident in 2007 and how it colours his view on Garuda. However, having lost a relative in a Swiss Air crash some years ago, my views on Swiss are dinner party conversation material, but should not form the primary basis of an article on the current state of that airline.
Kiwikurt,
You cannot be serious about Garuda compared with Qantas. Since 1967 Garuda has had 10 fatal “accidents” as follows;
67- 22 dead, 74 -33 dead, 75-25 dead, 79- 61 dead, 82-27 dead, 87- 24 dead, 96 3-dead, 97- 234 dead, 2002-one dead, 2007- 21 dead.
Thats a total of 473 fatalities over a 40 year period or an average of nearly 12 each and every year. Qantas has had accidents but not one person killed as a result ,due to the training of their pilots who saved lifes rather than contributing to the crashes and loss of life.
While airline service is important the first responsiblity of any business is not to kill its cutomers.
When Garuda racks up 40y ears of service without a hull loss or death then we will start comparing them with Qantas ,not before.
Farmer
Roy Morgan also left out the fact that his “best airline in the world” occasionally indulges in poisoning its passengers.
Farmer,
Past performance is not necessarily an indicator of future performance – that rings as true for Garuda as it does for Qantas and even my own employer.
Farmer let’s hope you haven’t jinxed Qantas, they have had so many near misses in recent times and let’s face it, their aircraft maintenance isn’t being enhanced at the moment.
Kiwikurt I lost a good friend in the SQ accident and I personally wouldn’t fly them no matter how many shiny new A380s they have. This accident was too absolute pilot error using the wrong runway for take off.
One thing to remember there is a point when any airline can crash, pilots are just human beings like the rest of us and none of us are perfect as an example Emirates had a near miss here in Australia because of a pilot entering incorrect data. Qantas themselves admit they were very lucky there were so many pilots on the A380 during the engine incident, had there been just the normal number the outcome could have been drastically different. Air France now has a terrible safety record and Thai Airways isn’t much better. All of these airlines had a perfect safety history before their first accident.
And one final thing, Ben you as a journalist should have an impartial view, clearly on this occasion you can’t and that really doesn’t put you in a difficult position.
Pretty sad that the original Roy Morgan article was published on 7th March, the 5th anniversary of the Garuda 200 crash that killed my brother and twenty other people and injured many more. Did Roy Morgan not know what that date may mean to Garuda or did they think it was some kind of redemption? Yeah, I’m still angry five years later.
It seems to ludicrous to be comparing Garuda of 2012 to several years back. Listing their fatal accidents (10 accidents in 45 years, with a total of 473 fatalities. Air France, in the exact same time period, has had 11 fatal accidents, with 551 fatalities. Their fleet size, incidentally, is comparable to Garuda Indonesia. Using the above flawed logic, Air France should be stripped of any awards and have their star ranking reduced. This might make the victims’ families and friends feel better, I suppose.
It could be argued that Air France 447 was the worst piece of airmanship in modern times, and if the flight crew had simply vacated their seats, the aircraft would have recovered from its pilot-induced stall.. But of course Air France deserves their 4 stars, apparently.
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