TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Air Transportation Directorate General of the Transportation Ministry assured it would strictly monitor all Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft operated in Indonesia following the plane crash of Ethiopian Airlines on Sunday, March 10.

“Actually this monitoring has been conducted since October 2018,” said Air Transportation Director General, Polana B Pramesti, in a statement Monday, March 11.

Other than the monitoring, Polana said that the ministry continued to run several programs for airliners operating the aircraft type, starting from operational procedure up to the establishment of additional training.

Read also: Ethiopian Airlines Crash; Garuda Indonesia Inspects Aircrafts

Polana claimed that the ministry had followed up the Airworthiness Directive which was recently issued by the Federal Aviation Administration and formed an intensive collaboration with global aviation institution to evaluate Boeing 737 Max 8.

The ministry, he added, would directly monitor the evacuation process of the plane crash in Ethiopia. “The ministry will synergize intensively with the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Commission (KNKT) and Boeing,” Polana noted.

The ties, he continued, was required to improve the operational technique or the aircraft operations. In light of the incident of the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash, Polana appealed to all Indonesian airlines to comply with flight regulations.

As reports suggested on Sunday, the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft of the Ethiopian Airlines ET 302 from Addis Ababa heading to Nairobi crashed after went off the radar at 08:44 local times. Earlier, the similar type of Indonesian Lion Air plane submerged into the waters in Karawang in October 2018.

FRANCISCA CHRISTY ROSANA