National Transportation Safety Committee
The National Transportation Safety Committee is an Indonesian government agency charged with the investigation of air, land, rail, and marine transportation safety deficiencies. It has its headquarters on the third floor of the Ministry of Transportation Building in Central Jakarta, Jakarta. It is a part of the Ministry of Transportation. The Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission investigates aviation accidents and incidents.
The NTSC was established by presidential decree in 1999. Subsequent to its investigations, it makes recommendations that are intended to prevent the recurrence of similar accidents.
The NTSC emphasises that the sole objective of its activities is to prevent recurrence of accidents, not to assign blame or liability.
In 2000, shortly after its creation, the NTSC issued a report on the crash of SilkAir Flight 185, where 104 people were killed, which stated that the agency was unable to determine a cause. The United States National Transportation Safety Board criticized the NTSC, stating that the cause of the crash was pilot suicide via a letter sent on December 11 the same year.
However, the first aviation accident investigated by the NTSC was Garuda Indonesia Flight 152, where 234 people were killed. This occurred less than three months before the SilkAir crash. The report of Flight 152 was issued in 2004, which stated that agency determined that the cause of the crash of Flight 152 was pilot error and ATC error.
