Holidaymakers offered more flights from Europe to Bali

Indonesia's national airline Garuda (www.garudaindonesia.co.uk) plans to relaunch flights to Europe from next year following the end of a two-year European Union ban on Indonesian carriers.

Garuda will initially offer daily flights between Amsterdam and the capital Jakarta, with onward connections to Bali.

The airline said it was also planning to relaunch flights to a number of other European cities, including London, Paris and Frankfurt, within the next five years.

The new A330-200 aircraft operating the route will have individual touch-screen LCD screens in all classes and a state of art inflight entertainment system with films on demand.

Effective from June 1 2010 the new flights will operate via Dubai. Fares to and from Dubai and Amsterdam will be announced shortly.

The EU banned all Indonesian aircraft from flying in European airspace or landing there in June 2007 after a string of fatal crashes in Indonesia that year, including a Garuda plane that overshot the runaway in Yogyakarta in central Java due to pilot error, killing 21 people.

An audit in 2007 by the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization, which sets global safety standards for the airline industry, said that the Indonesian aviation authority lacked the legal power to reprimand airlines that broke safety rules and that training of pilots and safety-maintenance personnel was poor.

However, Indonesia has since overhauled its aviation industry and Garuda has invested in a modern fleet, leading the European Union to lift its ban on Garuda and three other Indonesian operators in July.

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