The EU says it has removed all Indonesian airlines from its safety blacklist after they made air safety improvements. Airlines across the country were put on the blacklist in 2007 over safety concerns but only seven were removed in recent years. The latest move announced Thursday sees more than 50 Indonesian companies taken off. A total of 119 airlines are now banned in the 28-nation EU. Not all banned carriers fly to Europe but blacklisting them has been a strong business incentive for companies to improve their standards and for countries to boost aviation safety.<br/>
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The South Korean government on Thursday abolished a rule obliging its employees to use either Korean Air or Asiana Airlines for official overseas trips. Observers say the measure was taken because the Korean Air owner family's misbehaviour angered the public. According to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance and the Ministry of Personnel Management, the government decided to end its Government Transportation Request (GTR) system after using it for 40 years. Under the GTR common carrier transportation services were procured for all government officials. The government has signed GTR deals with Korean Air in September 1980 and Asiana Airlines in August 1990 and "obliges official travellers to use (Korean) national carriers," under an order from the prime minister. The ministries said the government has been retaining the system because it allows the government to secure urgent tickets, change seats and cancel tickets without additional fees, which can be up to 30% of the ticket price, but decided to end the system due to "circumstantial changes" surrounding overseas official trips. In 1980, Korean Air was the only domestic airline, but the country has eight carriers now, with 93 airlines currently flying from and to Korea. The number of outbound Koreans also grew 78 times to 2.65m last year from 340,000 in 1980.<br/>
Airbus inaugurated a new production line for its best-selling A320 jet with robots Luise and Renate joining human workers as it turns to new automation to help it deal with an eight-year order backlog. Airbus hopes digital technology will enable higher production and trigger a significant shift in research and development spending toward high-tech manufacturing. The planemaker is ramping up production of the single-aisle A320 jet, which competes with Boeing's 737, from 50 to 60 planes per month. Airbus has sold 8,000 of the jets with another 6,000 on order. The new final assembly line in Hamburg, like other lines, has a top rate of 10 aircraft per month, which it will reach by mid-2019. The two robots, whose names were chosen by employees, will in particular help to drill over 2,000 holes to join the two halves of the fuselage together, work normally done by humans. They form part of a new final assembly line where the fuselage and wings are transported by automated moving tooling platforms, rather than being lowered by cranes onto fixed jigs, and where dynamic laser tracking is used to perfectly align aircraft parts. The savings from the new technologies are not about time, but about precision and ergonomics, Airbus staff said.<br/>