Indonesia To Allow Boeing 737 MAX Flights After 2.5 Years Of Sanctions - Civil Aviation

Indonesia has decided to lift a ban on Boeing 737 MAX flights over the country after two and a half years of sanctions, Director General of Civil Aviation Novie Riyanto said on Tuesday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 28th December, 2021) Indonesia has decided to lift a ban on Boeing 737 MAX flights over the country after two and a half years of sanctions, Director General of Civil Aviation Novie Riyanto said on Tuesday.

"We have coordinated with aviation authorities and operators around the world, especially in the ASEAN. Several countries have allowed to operate the 737MAX aircraft. Following this development, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation had prepared to lift the ban on the operations of 737MAX aircraft," the official said, as quoted by Indonesian news agency Antaranews.

The preliminary decision was made after a thorough international investigation into the 2018 and 2019 Boeing 737 MAX crashes, which resulted in the worldwide airliner groundings.

The decision is also based on technical evaluations of the flight control design's changes and the pilot's workload for the aircraft, conducted at the Boeing Flight Services Simulator in Singapore.

"During the evaluation process, we conducted flight test and adjusted to the changes in the flight control design using the Boeing 737MAX simulator," Riyanto added.

Two Boeing 737 MAX passenger airlines crashed, one in Indonesia in October 2018 and the other in Ethiopia in March 2019, killing a combined 346 people. In total, 195 countries banned Boeing 737MAX flights, and 180 of those, including Malaysia, Singapore, the United States, Canada, and India, have already lifted sanctions.