Investvine-June 16
The European Union has removed all Indonesian airlines from its safety blacklist on June 14 in a general acknowledgement of their attempts to improve poor safety standards.
The bloc banned all Indonesia-based airlines from flying into EU airspace in 2007 amid a string of accidents and reports of worsening safety standards following the deregulation of the country’s aviation industry in the late 1990s amid a lot of unaddressed safety concerns.
Over the past years, a number of airlines, including the flag carrier Garuda Indonesia, as well as Airfast Indonesia, Ekspress Transportasi Antarbenua, Indonesia AirAsia, Citilink, Lion Air and Batik Air, were removed, but the bulk of Indonesian carriers remained on the list until this week when the remaining 55 Indonesian airlines have been certified to meet European air safety regulations.
Garuda was the only banned airline that flew to the EU but Europeans had been advised not to use other Indonesian carriers for domestic trips. “This is a beginning to start to become competitive,” Indonesian Minister of Transportation Budi Sumadi said at a press conference in Jakarta on June 15.
“The repeal of the ban means that we, the regulator and operators, are considered to have fulfilled all international regulations,” he added.
Airline experts noted that the big impact on the industry is not necessarily about the possibility of Indonesian airlines flying to Europe, but about aircraft insurance rates, the ability of Europeans to fly on those airlines in Indonesia and have insurance coverage from their European insurers.
