Garuda has had 14 fatal accidents since 1950.

The most recent major crash was in 1997 when all 222 passengers died when a Garuda Airbus crashed in low visibility 18 miles short of Medan airport in Sumatra.

Peter Harbison, managing director of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, today described Garuda’s safety record as “not great”.

“I would hesitate to say that their maintenance standards were not as high as here in Australia but I think it is fair to say that aviation infrastructure in Indonesia is inferior to Australia,” he said.

Mr Harbison said the quality of runways and airport services was often below the international standard.

He said the biggest challenge in maintaining safety in that country was the weather conditions.

“They have a lot of wild weather and storms that we just don’t have to deal with here,” Mr Harbison said.

With a fleet of 53 aircraft, Garuda is roughly a third the size of Qantas which has a fleet of 129 aircraft – excluding the Jetstar fleet.

But its safety record is chequered with incidents in comparison to Qantas.

Garuda’s past three fatal crashes include:

September 1997 – Flight 152 crashes in Sibolangit, 18 miles short of Medan airport in low visibility. All 222 passengers and 12 crew killed.

June 1996 – Flight 865 departing Fukuoka, Japan, overran the runway after aborting takeoff due to engine fire. The aircraft was totally destroyed but amazingly only three of the 275 people on board were killed.

January 2002 – Flight 421 from Lombok to Yogyakarta forced to make an emergency landing in poor weather on the Bengawan Solo River. One person – a stewardess, was killed in the accident.
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