Jakarta:

Indonesia to lift Boeing 737 MAX ban, the Southeast Asian country’s transport ministry said on Tuesday, three years after local airline Lion Air lost one of the planes in a fatal crash during a routine domestic flight.

189 people were killed when the flight plunged into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff in October 2018. An equally fatal incident with an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX the following March prompted aviation authorities around the world to bring the aircraft to a standstill. ‘airplane.

Approval for its return comes months after the model was returned to service in the United States and Europe, and follows the more recent lifting of grounding orders in other countries, including Australia, Japan, India, Malaysia, Singapore and Ethiopia.

Indonesia will follow other countries to lift the ban after an assessment of changes to the aircraft’s system, its transport ministry said in a statement.

Pilots of airlines based in Indonesia will need to complete additional simulator training before they can fly the plane again, the statement added.

Private company Lion Air, which operated ten 737 MAX jets before the ban, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

National airline Garuda Indonesia has said it has no plans to reintroduce the aircraft to its fleet as it focuses on an ongoing debt restructuring process, chief executive Irfan Setiaputra told Reuters .

The state-controlled airline, which operated a 737 MAX before the ban, said it plans to cut its fleet from 142 to 66 planes as part of the plan.

(Except for the title, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)