Sriwijaya Air

Is Sriwijaya Air safe?

Its record is weak. Sriwijaya Air, once Indonesia's third-largest airline group, lost flight SJ182 about five minutes after take-off from Jakarta on 9 January 2021, killing all 62 people on board. The investigation found a fault that pilots had reported twice in the week before and that maintenance never fixed. Sriwijaya has written offHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary four other Boeing 737s since 2008, flies an old fleet, and has no IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary audit that we could confirm. We score it 44, below Lion Air and Garuda Indonesia.

What brought down SJ182?

The aircraft, a 26-year-old Boeing 737-500 registered PK-CLC, left Jakarta in heavy rain. Climbing through about 8,000 feet on autopilot, it needed less power. The autothrottle pulled the left thrust lever back, but the right one, binding mechanically, barely moved. To compensate, the left lever kept retarding. The asymmetry grew until, near 10,900 feet, the autopilot let go and the jet rolled more than 45 degrees to the left and plunged into the Java Sea.

Indonesia's investigation board, KNKT, published its final report on 10 November 2022. It found that the system meant to cut out the autothrottle during thrust asymmetry acted late, and that the crew, probably relying on the automation, did not monitor the levers or the flight path. When the roll began, the pilots appear to have believed the aircraft was rolling right and steered further the wrong way.

The maintenance history is the finding that weighs most here. Pilots wrote up the autothrottle as unserviceable on 3 and 4 January 2021. Engineers cleaned an electrical connector, then the take-off/go-around switch, ran a self-test that passed, and released the aircraft. KNKT concluded that these fixes never found the friction in the thrust lever mechanism, so the problem stayed "prolonged and unresolved". It also noted that Indonesia had no national standard for upset-prevention and recovery training, which left airline programmes thin.

The earlier accidents

Before SJ182, Sriwijaya's write-offsHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary were all landing accidents, and the pattern matters because several involved approaches that should have been abandoned:

• Jambi, 27 August 2008. A 737-200 built in 1985 lost a hydraulic system on approach. The crew landed fast without speed brakes, overran the 2,000-metre runway and hit three farmers in a field, killing one. The investigators said there had been time to go around and work through the failure.
• Yogyakarta, 20 December 2011. After an unstable approach with several "pull up" warnings, a 737-300 could not stop and veered off the left side of the runway; the nose and right main gear collapsed. KNKT cited fixation and complacency.
• Pontianak, 1 June 2012. A 737-400 drifted off the runway in heavy rain and its nose gear collapsed.
• Manokwari, 31 May 2017. A 737-300 overran a wet runway after "sink rate" and "pull up" warnings on short final, damaging the nose gear, fuselage and both engines.

Nobody on board died in any of these, but four written-off jets in nine years is a lot for an airline of Sriwijaya's size.

Oversight, audits and the money problem

Every Indonesian airline was on the EU Air Safety ListEU Air Safety ListThe European Commission's list of airlines banned or restricted from flying in EU airspace because they do not meet international safety standards.More in the glossary from 2007; Sriwijaya was among the carriers that argued their case in Brussels in May 2018, and all were cleared on 14 June 2018. The regulator is in better shape than it was then: in September 2026 the DGCA said ICAO's audit put its effective implementationICAO USOAPICAO's audit of how well each country's aviation regulator oversees safety. The result is an "effective implementation" percentage.More in the glossary at 85%. Indonesia is not on the FAA's April 2025 safety assessment list, which only covers countries whose airlines serve the United States. Sriwijaya is not an IATA member, and we could not confirm an IOSA registrationIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary.

Money has shaped the safety picture. A 2021 Jakarta Post analysis described an airline that grew by buying older aircraft cheaply, with a combined Sriwijaya and NAM Air fleet averaging nearly 20 years. In late 2019 Garuda's maintenance arm GMF, owed about Rp800 billion, stopped servicing the group's jets, and only 12 of its 30 aircraft were cleared to fly; the DGCA said it was supervising Sriwijaya and NAM Air through its airworthiness and operations inspectors. After SJ182 and the pandemic, creditors took the airline to court; the debt restructuring (PKPU) ended in a settlement in July 2023, with about Rp7.3 trillion in debts repaid over up to 15 years. Sriwijaya keeps flying a much smaller network: in February 2026 it opened a route to Morowali in Central Sulawesi.

What it flies now

The airline publishes no fleet list, and its website blocks automated checks, so we have no official count for 2026. The public clues point to an old fleet. In 2021 the Sriwijaya and NAM Air fleet averaged nearly 20 years, and it included classic Boeing 737-500s, the type lost on SJ182, built in the 1990s. In January 2025 ch-aviation reported that Sriwijaya had wet-leased a 737-800, and in September 2025 that NAM Air had returned a 737-500 stored since 2019 to service. A small, old fleet with tight finances is the combination that makes maintenance discipline matter most, and that is where SJ182 failed.

Who should think twice

• If you have a choice on a route, Garuda Indonesia and Batik Air are both IOSA-registeredIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary and score higher.
• If Sriwijaya is the only option, accept weather holds and diversions without complaint. All four landing write-offsHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary happened in rain or on wet runways, and the 2011 report describes a captain whose behaviour changed after a passenger complained to him about a diversion.
• Check the operator. NAM Air, the sister airline, holds its own certificate; its record is not part of this score.

How we scored it

The accident record (35) carries SJ182 and four other write-offsHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary on a small fleet. Oversight (58) sits below Lion Air's 66: Indonesia's regulator now reports 85% on ICAO's audit, but Sriwijaya has no IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary we could confirm and needed extra DGCA supervision in 2019. The fleet (40) reflects the old, undisclosed fleet. Serious incidents (45) is driven by the unresolved autothrottle fault; the environment (55) is the same demanding Indonesian network as Lion Air's.