In a Facebook post yesterday (June 23), ACT president Mana Nimitmongkol claimed the crashes weren’t caused by human error, but substandard maintenance as a result of corruption.
He was referring to two crashes which took place earlier this year, reports the Bangkok Post.
The first accident happened on Apr 25, when a DHC-6-400 aircraft belonging to the Royal Thai Police (RTP) crashed in the sea just off Phetchaburi’s Cha-am district, killing six officers.
About a month later, a Bell-212 helicopter belonging to the Kanchanaburi Police Aviation Unit crashed in Prachuap Khiri Khan’s Muang district, killing three officers.
The post cited a leaked Line chat, in which a police pilot claimed that the planes “were absolutely not fit to fly”.
At present, the RTP has 82 aircraft in its fleet, over half of which are more than 25 years old. Some of the Bell-212 helicopters in the fleet have been in service for more than 50 years.
Several RTP pilots have said only about 10 of these aircraft are actually safe to fly, Mr Mana said in the post.
Despite the fleet’s advanced age, the annual maintenance budget remains stagnant at B950 million, which isn’t enough to cover the total expenditure for repairs and urgent upgrades to keep them airworthy.
He claimed the amount has been deliberately kept at B950mn because a budget request of over B1 billion has to be approved by the Cabinet, subjecting it to further scrutiny.
The ACT president also claimed RTP aircraft maintenance isn’t carried out in a transparent manner.
At present, the fleet is maintained by the RTP’s in-house technicians, along with Thai Airways, which charges about B142mn annually to service the aircraft.
However, Thai Airways technicians do not have the capacity to maintain the majority of aircraft in the RTP’s fleet. This means up to 90% of the work has to be subcontracted to third-party companies, which are often selected through opaque processes controlled by senior police officials, the ACT president said.
Kickbacks are common throughout the entire maintenance chain, which results in inflated repair costs and overpriced spare parts being used in the upkeep of the aircraft, he said.
Because the maintenance budget has not been adjusted for some time, many grounded aircraft end up being “cannibalised”, with their parts removed to keep others flying, he said, before calling the entire process a “corruption chain” that benefits multiple agencies over the safety of crews. He called for a review of the maintenance chain, saying rampant corruption has cost lives.