Merpati Flight Skids Off Runway: Banda, Maluku Islands

Short runways and bad weather conditions coupled with poor maintenance on runways at airports in Indonesia play a big part in most air line incidents. Some of the runways on the outer islands of Indonesia are somewhat 'hairy' to land on.

When the weather conditions are bad as they are during the wet season its not surprising that an Indonesian passenger plane carrying 17 people slid off the runway while landing on the eastern island of Banda yesterday. Almost everyone on board suffered injuries but none of them serious. The Merpati Airline plane arriving from the town of Masohi on Seram Island in rainy conditions was carrying three crew and 14 passengers.

I have been involved in a few incidents on my travels within the archipelago. The most memorable, if you can call it that, was when one year the Garuda place was coming into land at Adiscupito Airport in Yogyakarta during an electric thunderstorm.

The plane was heaving up and down on its way to land, lightning was flashing constantly, and most of the passengers were throwing up giving the brown paper bags a hard time. As soon as the wheels hit the runway I could feel it. Like poetry in motion the plane slid sideways down the runway very gracefully but scared the absolute shit out of the rest of the passengers,, literally.

Eventually the plane came to a halt at the very end of the runway and I waited for the other passengers to depart, which they did in a rush, before I stepped off the plane. When I finally met Candika at the terminal she was crying and mumbling something about a fire on the plane. It seems lightning had struck the tail of the plane and sparks were flying off as we landed.