Welcomed back in Europe

The European Commission’s partial lifting of its blanket ban on Indonesian airlines on Wednesday, which was imposed in June 2007, will not immediately boost tourist arrivals from Europe.    

Yet its immediate benefit is the international recognition of our air safety standards at least for the two scheduled airlines – national flag-carrier Garuda Indonesia and Mandala Airlines — and two charter companies – Airfast Indonesia and Premiair — which are now permitted to fly over European skies.

It will take at least six to nine months for Garuda to reopen its services to Europe, but the EC ruling will still be a boon to the airlines because insurance companies are now willing to cover EU citizens who fly the four carriers.

We don’t think there is any commercial motivation whatsoever behind the partial removal of the ban. It is simply a coincidence that the two scheduled airlines that were withdrawn from the blacklist were the biggest operators of the European-made Airbus jetliners in Indonesia.

The four airlines were the first to have been cleared because they have implemented new regulations on the installation of safety equipment, including enhanced ground proximity warning systems, which are mandatory on all commercial aircraft. 

The partial lifting of the ban should also be attributed to the concerted steps taken by the Transportation Ministry’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation to improve safety such as  employing more safety inspectors, having more aircraft inspections, implementing a quarterly safety audit of all local carriers, grounding carriers and grounding aircraft types.

A visit by EC air safety experts to Indonesia, including the inspection of the four carriers in February, found significant improvements in the structure and staffing of the directorate general to enable it to properly perform its regulatory and supervisory tasks.

The July 2007 ban, imposed after a string of airline accidents since 2005, was indeed an embarrassment for the country. But the blanket ban has now turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it has forced the government to act quickly and firmly to improve air safety standards.

International pressures have often been more powerful in forcing us to take corrective measures and the blanket ban should have been the most powerful motivational force for the government to act quickly to improve its air safety regulations.

Just witness how quickly our parliament enacted a new civil aviation law late last year, which imposes much tougher operational, financial and technical requirements on airlines.  It took less than six months for the government and the House of Representatives to complete the new legislation that has 466 articles on air safety and airport management.

Had the problem remained mostly a domestic issue, it might have been business as usual for our airline operators and aviation regulators.   The stricter operating, technical and financial standards that require an airline company to operate at least ten aircraft — five of which shall be owned — will accelerate consolidation within the industry. This in turn will force mergers among some of the 14 scheduled operators.