Friday, February 25, 2011

My dad at IPTN Nurtanio Aircraft Industry

Friday 25th February 2011

I got a text message from my dad. He said, “Hi darling, I am in Bandung now, after Tanjung Pinang. Back home tomorrow, then back to Bandung again to continue the investigation of the engines. Love you and big hug to all of you.”

I am amazed. My dad was born in 1936, he will be 75 in May this year, and he is still flying around the 13,700 islands of Indonesia investigating air accidents. Last week he went to Tanjung Pinang, a small island off the cost of Sumatera, to investigate the crash of a Casa 212-100. The twin turbo propeller belonging to Sabang Merauke Air Charter (SMAC) was on its flight test with two pilots, two crew members and a flight inspector when it crashed in Bintan island, killing everyone on board.

My dad led the Indonesian National Transport Safety Commission (NTSC or KNKT, Komisi Nasional Keselamatan Transpor) investigation team. Like a forensic scientist, he would analyse every single part of the engine they found to determine the cause of the accident. When on a mission like this, my dad is always a young man.

Today’s text message from dad took me back to the days of my childhood, when he took me from hangar to hangar, showing me aircrafts, their engines and all the beautiful complicated parts. The smell of avgas and oil combined with the background noise of aeroplanes taking off and landing was the happiest smell and sound for me.

I remember my first visit to the hangar of Nurtanio Aircraft Industry where my dad is currently working to analyse the Casa 212 engines. Nurtanio – renamed as IPTN then renamed again as PT Dirgantara – was the pride and joy of the nation back in 1980s. It was also my dad’s pride and joy, with his “baby” the Casa-Nurtanio CN-235 was born. Seeing CN-235 flying later when I was an aviation journalist always took me back to the days when my dad talked passionately about this new design, about his opinion on its fly-by-wire system, then his weeks in Bandung testing it.

In the 1980s, Nurtanio cooperated with Spanish Casa and together designed and manufactured the Casa-Nurtanio CN-235. For this project, during early 1980s, my dad often went to Casa in Spain, MBB in Germany and Aerospatiale in France. As an 8-year-old girl then, all I knew was that my dad was tending his baby.

While I am writing this, my dad is back in the hangars of his youth, the home of his baby CN-235. My thought is there with him. He will be dissecting the engines of the Casa 212 with precision of a forensic scientist. He will be reconstructing the last flight and analysing the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder – the orange box known as the Black Box; then in the next few days, he will be sitting in front of his lap top with charts, animation, calculation and colourful diagram that represent the last flight of SMAC’s Casa 212.

My mum said, he always looks like a teenager getting ready to go on exciting mountain expedition whenever he received a call to go on an air accident investigation. He is always healthy on the busiest days. He climbed mountains in Papua and lifting heavy parts of a wrecked aircraft in his 70s. Then when the investigation is concluded, my dad will be fast asleep on his comfortable sofa, looking like a sweet old man.

My dad is the aviator hero that I am proud to know of. There might be Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Eddie Rickenbaker, Howard Hughes and other famous names in the world, but there is only one Joseph Tumenggung who is – until today – the only internationally certified air accident investigator in Indonesia, whose stories made me fell in love with the roaring sound of an iron bird. There is only one sweet dad who took me in his Volkswagen Beetle to the end of the runway at sunset, watching aeroplanes taking off and landing.

I miss you dad….