a number of other Indonesian airlines at the time, has been heavily criticized. Adam Air has reportedly bullied pilots to fly planes they knew were unsafe. Pilots have reported repeated and deliberate breaches of international safety regulations, and aircraft being flown in non-airworthy states (including one aircraft flying with a damaged door handle and another with a damaged window) for months. Other incidents include pilots being ordered to fly aircraft even after exceeding the take-off limit of five times per pilot per day, using spare parts from other planes to keep planes in the air, and ignoring requests not to take off due to unsafe aircraft. According to the Associated Press, one ex-Adam Air pilot stated that "every time you flew, you had to fight with the ground staff and the management about all the regulations you had to violate." Pilots also claimed that if they confronted their seniors, they were grounded or docked pay. Founder Adam Adhitya Suherman had personally denied the accusations, stating that maintenance had made up "40 percent of our total operational costs". Specific aircraft Investigators discovered that the aircraft was the subject of a large number of maintenance discrepancies filed by pilots (called "write-ups" in the aviation industry). The highest number of complaints concerned the captain's side vertical speed indicator, which informs the air crew of the in feet per minute (1ft/min = 0.00508m/s), metres per second, or knots (1kn ≈ 0.514m/s), depending on country and type of at which the aircraft is ascending or descending. In all, 48 complaints were made regarding the instrument in the three months before the crash. The aircraft's inertial navigation system, which informs pilots of their position, orientation, and velocity, was complained about a total of thirty times. The International Herald Tribune reported that this may be of particular significance. The third most-complained about instrument was a fuel differential light, which received fifteen write-ups. Numerous complaints were also received about inoperative cockpit instrument lights, as well as multiple other malfunctions. Several complaints were made that the flaps, which modify drag and lift during take-off and landing, were jamming at twenty-five degrees upon landing, and there were two complaints that the weather radar was faulty. Legal action Adam Air was sued by Indonesian consumer and labour groups over the accident, for a total of one trillion rupiahs (US$100 million), to be paid to the families of the victims. According to