EU to lift ban Indonesia's Garuda, three other carriers

Jul 4, 2009, 5:04 GMT

   Jakarta - The European Union will soon partially lift a blanket ban on Indonesian airlines, imposed in 2007 after a series of deadly air accidents, the Indonesian Transport Ministry said Saturday.

   The EU's Air Safety Committee has recommended that the bloc drop the ban on national carrier Garuda Indonesia and three other airlines which are deemed to have met EU's safety standards, said Bambang Ervan, a spokesman for the ministry.

   The three other airlines are Mandala Airlines, Airfast Indonesia and Premiair, he said.

   'The process will take about two weeks. They will have to translate the documents into 22 languages and sign it,' said Bambang.

   The European Union has banned Indonesia's 51 airlines since July 2007 after a spate of air crashes that raised alarm about the country's aviation safety.

   On January 1, 2007, an Adam Air plane that plunged into the sea off South Sulawesi province, killing all 102 people on board.

   In March the same year, a Garuda jet overshot the runway and burst into flames in Yogyakarta, killing 21 people.

   A Garuda spokesman, Pujobroto, said the airline was preparing to revive its Jakarta-Amsterdam route.

   'The preparations will take about nine months, so we expect to fly again to Europe in the first semester of 2010,' he was quoted as saying by the Detik.com news website.

   Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago, has seen the emergence of airlines, including low-cost ones, since the aviation sector was liberalized in the late 1990s.

   The rapid growth has raised questions over whether safety has been compromised.