JAKARTA, Dec 28, Indonesia will lift a ban on the Boeing 737 MAX, the Southeast Asian country's transportation ministry said on Tuesday, three years after Lion Air lost one of its planes in a fatal crash during a routine domestic flight.
The flight plunged into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff in October 2018, killing 189 people. A deadly incident with an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX the following March prompted aviation authorities around the world to ground the aircraft.
The approval for its return comes months after the model returned to service in the United States and Europe, and follows the lifting of grounding orders in other countries, including Australia, Japan, India, Malaysia, Singapore and Ethiopia.
Indonesia will be one of the countries to lift the ban after an evaluation of changes to the aircraft's system, the ministry of transportation said in a statement.
The statement stated that pilots at Indonesia-based airlines will have to undergo additional simulator training before they can fly the plane again.
The privately owned Lion Air, which operated ten 737 MAX planes before the ban, did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
National flag carrier Garuda Indonesia said it had no plans to reintroduce the plane to its fleet as it focuses on an ongoing debt restructuring process, chief executive Irfan Setiaputra told Reuters.
The state-controlled airline, which had previously operated one 737 MAX before the ban, plans to reduce its fleet from 142 to 66 planes under the plans.