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Govt hopes EU will eliminate RI airline ban by end of year

The government says it is on track in its efforts to make the EU remove the flight ban against Indonesian airlines and expects progress on the issue this year

Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Tue, January 12, 2016

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Govt hopes EU will eliminate RI airline ban by end of year

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he government says it is on track in its efforts to make the EU remove the flight ban against Indonesian airlines and expects progress on the issue this year.

Currently, only four Indonesian airlines are allowed to fly to the EU.

The Transportation Ministry'€™s airworthiness and aircraft operation director, Muhammad Alwi, said the ministry held a meeting with the European Commission, the regulatory arm of the EU, in October last year in Brussels, Belgium to request the removal of Indonesia from the EU Air Safety List.

The EU Air Safety List is a list of airlines that are subject to an operating ban or operational restrictions within the EU.

'€œThe meeting was successful because if not, they would have not invited us to the next meeting,'€ he said on Monday. The October meeting had been followed up by an assessment process held in November last year.

Alwi said during the meeting in October, the ministry officials, including Alwi himself, presented the results of a safety oversight on Indonesian aviation to the commission.

According to Alwi, the presentation was fruitful as EU sent a notification letter in December, announcing that the commission would come to Indonesia in 2016 to verify the assessment. '€œSo, in April, it will be reevaluated, but the meetings there so far have been positive,'€ he said.

The ministry aimed to have the ban removed by June this year, as it strived to get approval from 28 members of the EU on the matter.

The EU has maintained a ban on all but four Indonesian airlines from entering Europe since 2007, a move caused by a lack of improvement in domestic aviation safety. The latest Air Safety List has so far only exempted Garuda Indonesia, Airfast Indonesia, Ekspres Transportasi Antarbenua (PremiAir) and Indonesia AirAsia.

The list currently contains all airlines certified in 20 states, a total of 230 airlines, including Blue Wing Airlines from Suriname and Iraqi Airways from Iraq. It is based on the unanimous opinion of the EU Air Safety Committee, consisting of aviation safety experts from 28 member states of the union.

The EU also announced in June last year that it has lifted the ban on Philippines Airlines, which it imposed in 2010.

Alwi also said that the ministry aimed to improve the country'€™s aviation safety standards based on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) assessment to Category 1 by June this year as well.

The FAA downgraded Indonesia'€™s aviation safety to Category 2 in the agency'€™s International Aviation Safety Assessment program nine years ago, signaling that Indonesia lacked the regulations necessary to oversee air carriers in accordance with minimum international standards.

'€œWe have completed 95 percent of the findings and we have sent it to the FAA website. They will verify it this year,'€ he said.

The government has also followed all the recommendations from the UN International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which will be verified in May, according to Alwi.

The ministry previously claimed that it had fixed the problems the ICAO pointed out in its latest audit, regarding aircraft inspection training as well as the country'€™s poor safety oversight.

The ICAO findings showed that Indonesia scored below the global average in all eight areas it assessed during its audit in May 2014.

The ICAO audit in 2007, which spotted 121 loopholes in the Indonesian air safety oversight system, partly led to the FAA and the EU imposing the flight ban on all Indonesian airlines.

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