Yet another air crash is starting to bring home to many in Asia the sub-optimal state of air safety in Asia, particularly in rapidly developing East Asia. In the case of China Airlines flight CI611, it looks like we wont have the more newsworthy terrorists to blame, but simple, boring safety management.

Safety in any organization is talked about a lot, but rarely acted upon in a strategic manner. The old sterotype of the be-spectacled safety officer, "transferred" from other duties due to a personal management stuff up, still endures. The high profile sophisticated glamourous jobs are in marketing, and sales.

Yet when marketers stuff up all that happens is sales plummet. When safety stuffs up people get killed...

Even when asked to rate airlines, very rarely do consumers mention safety. It is just not 'top of mind'. So it is a system problem, affecting both the industry as well as its customers.

Because airline crashes are so spectacular and affect the middle class who read newspapers and watch the idiot box, compared to say just 1,000's of peasants dying in floods and famine, the airline industry is better than most in funding safety related projects. (See also our review of Cockpit Resource Management and the SQ006 crash) Yet there are wide differences in practices between airlines.

Taiwanese flagship carrier China Airlines boasts a not enviable record in air safety, with five fatal crashes in the last eight years. In fact many see it as one of the world's most dangerous airlines. The crash on the weekend was on the routine and very popular Taipei-Hong Kong route, the most profitable air corridoor in the world, linking Taiwan's capital with world financial hub and gateway to China - Hong Kong - in the absence of direct routes to China.

Even before the causes of the crash are known, it will surely drive the airline into crisis, just as things were starting to look better. While the stocks of China Airlines, along with the Taiwanese Stock Market in general have soared over the past year, today China Airlines stocks dived to 7%, the daily limit allowable by local stock market regulations.

Latest news suggests that the aircraft broke into four pieces in flight, and that one of the peices took off in the reverse different direction. Farmers in the area reported hearing an explosion, and debris littered a wide area. On one well known professional airline staff discussion board, references were made to a blood splattered-seat being recovered, suggesting some violent trauma on board, rather than an implosion, which in normal cases of this type would leave no such marks. Radio communications gave no clue to an impending disaster.

Speculation rose over a direct attack by China, immediately denied by China and sensibly ignored. Other speculation includes a tragic accident associated with one of the very frequent Chinese military exercises in the strait, and finally of course a terrorist attack, though interestingly the latter received little publicity in mainstream news sources. Such rumours were quickly dispelled by local defence and intelligence authorities, who stated that "None of the information we received proved any of the speculation". The Boeing 747-200 aircraft was 23 years old, soon to be delivered to a Thai company that had bought the plane recently.

The incident however underlies increasing concern about the level of air safety in rapidly developing East Asia. Since April this year, East Asia has now suffered three crashes, the other two involving PRC (Mainland China) fleets, one an Air China flight that crashed in South Korea killing 128, and the other a China Northern Airlines flight that crashed into the Yellow Sea near Dalian in China killing 112. Even in South Korea, the president is on record as berating some Korean airlines for their standards of safety several years back.

The oft-repeated common wisdom in airline management circles world-wide is that any management project with implications for improving safety will have a major edge over competitive projects for budgets. However recent financial problems in both the tourism and aviation industries may have put a strain even on safety related projects. Add to that the rapid growth in demand for air travel in China especially, and some quarters are wondering whether airline safety is being given the attention it deserves in East Asia.

We will be following the business and management implications of the crash and its aftermath in forthcoming items...