Borneo Post Online : September 22, 2012, Saturday
KUCHING: MASwings’ safety system meets world’s standard and its
procedures to face emergency situations, including the unlikely event of
a crash, are in place.
MASwings chief operating officer Nasip
Roslan added that all its planes are checked every six months to ensure
their airworthiness.
“Yes, definitely. Our system and emergency
procedures are of world class standard and approved by our regulatory
body under the DCA, which follows world class standard,” Nasip told the
media at MASwings’ emergency simulation exercise held its office at the
Kuching International Airport here yesterday.
Currently, MASwings,
which has some 1,400 staff, is servicing both the Sarawak and Sabah
sectors with ten ATR 72 500 aircrafts and four Twin Otter-300 planes.
For
safety purposes, each ATR is fitted with very high frequency radio
system to track it while the Twin Otter plane is fitted with a GPS.
“The
way the system is designed in all our planes is that when an unlikely
event of certain emergency, such as when a plane is subject to a certain
force or it crashes, it will emit an emergency frequency that will
indicate its exact location,” Nasip pointed out.
He added that
when such a scenario occurs, the signal will be transmitted to the Air
Traffic Control (ATC) which would then alert the entire response teams.
“When such an unlikely event happens, the response would be almost immediate,” he said.
Nasip,
who has been in the industry for over 30 years, pointed out that their
rescue procedure policy is also one of the best in the aviation
industry.
However, he admitted that MASwings, like other aviation
organisations, do experience a staff shortage and delays in its
response.
“That’s why we will continue to improve ourselves on how best we respond to any situation,” he stressed.
On
another safety issue, Nasip assured its customers that should anything
happen to any of its pilots while flying, the co-pilot could easily take
over to ensure the safe landing of the aircraft and passengers’ safety.
On
a related issue, Nasip said MASwings is using much smaller planes to
service the people in Sarawak and Sabah, as it does not warrant the
company to use much bigger jet planes.
“We are operating on
passenger-demand and it’s much cheaper to operate these smaller
aircrafts compared to the bigger jet planes,” said Nasip, adding that he
could not comment whether or not his company is considering getting any
jet plane in the near future.
On the Twin Otter planes, Nasip
said they are used to service smaller towns and isolated destinations
such as Ba Kelalan, Lawas, Bario and Mukah and Tanjong Manis.
Meanwhile,
Nasip said MASwings is ever ready to charter its aircrafts to the
Election Commission (EC) in the upcoming general election.
