Sjoerd

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6248490.stm

All Indonesian airlines including national carrier Garuda are to be banned from the European Union. Indonesian carriers do not currently fly to Europe, but the ban serves as a warning to consumers not to use these airlines elsewhere in the world. "European citizens should avoid flying with these carriers," an EU official said. "They are really unsafe."

The new list, decided upon following advice from an EU air safety committee, is expected to be formalised within a week. Garuda flew to Rome and Amsterdam until 2005, and is planning to resume services to Amsterdam in 2008.
Indonesia's ambassador to the EU, Nadjib Riphat Kesoema, said Indonesian airlines were safe and he hoped the EU would review its decision at a meeting of air safety experts in October.

alex0683de

TAAG Angola Airlines is also a prominent addition to the list. Morbidly enough, a TAAG B737 crashed today in southern Congo - on the same day the EU put them on the blacklist.

Of further interest is the addition of six Bulgarian carriers to the list. Since Bulgaria is now a member of the EU, that pretty much means that these carriers are grounded. They can no longer operate within their home country, and I don't know how much business they can pick up on operations entirely outside the EU.

To be honest, most of the carriers on the list couldn't care less that they're on it (think "Equatoguineana de Aviación" or "Bellview Airlines (Sierra Leone) Ltd"), but for those Bulgarian operators, it's going to sting big time.

tsastor

What a shame. AFAIK Garuda is regarded much higher than other Indonesian carriers. Have flown them several times myself and used to like them a lot, both service and planes. I'm not a aviation specialist though so cannot really say if they are safe or not. But I will choose Garuda over other Indonesian airlines.

Rejuvenated

July 2, 2007

Indonesia has signed an agreement with the global aviation body to improve air safety in the wake of a string of accidents and after the European Union banned the country's airlines from its airspace last week.

Source: http://news.airwise.com/story/view/1183397219.html

OccasionalFlyerPerson

Interesting to see this thread after watching an Al Jazeera documentary.

How much has the safety of Indonesian airlines changed in the last ten years? I note that the documentary I watched is much more recent, but still describes significant problems.

MSPeconomist

Is part of Air Asia considered to be an Indonesian airline?

frobozzelectric

air asia operates and is registered in many countries, indonesia is one of them

dburns

Which documentary did you watch?

OccasionalFlyerPerson

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/...102959798.html

This one. In my opinion, Al Jazeera do a lot of very good documentaries and investigative reports. Which makes it very worrying that Saudi Arabia is trying to destroy it.

dburns

Thanks...I might have to look into this more

Loren Pechtel

The problem is they are no longer independent, but agents of the Qatari government.

OccasionalFlyerPerson

Potential bias is also worrying. But, that doesn't make it reasonable for Saudi Arabia to try to destroy it. Both of these are evils if true.

Loren Pechtel

The thing is their past reputation doesn't reflect their current reality.

N830MH

Didn't Philippines Airlines who already banned from EU airspace over years ago? So now, they resume flight to EU again. Doesn't make sense!