PT Merpati Nusantara Airlines, operating as Merpati Nusantara Airlines, was an airline in Indonesia based in Central Jakarta, Jakarta. It operated scheduled domestic services to more than 25 destinations in Indonesia, as well as scheduled international services to East Timor and Malaysia. The word merpati is Indonesian for "dove", and Nusantara is a Javanese word found in the Pararaton ("the Book of Kings", probably written in the 16th century) meaning "the outer islands”, referring to the Indonesian archipelago. The airline was based at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Jakarta. It also maintained both a maintenance and simulator facility at Juanda International Airport, Surabaya. The Merpati Training Centre at Surabaya housed Fokker F-27, AVIC MA60 and CN-235 full motion simulators.
The airline was established and started operations on 6 September 1962. It was set up by the Indonesian government as the second state airline, with the main objective of taking over the network of domestic services developed by the Air Force since 1958. In 1962, Garuda took over the routes in West Irian (the former Dutch New Guinea), that were operated by KLM subsidiary De Kroonduif (1956-1962) and assigned the routes to Merpati the same year.
In October 1978, the airline was taken over by Garuda, but continued to operate under its own name. Merpati was integrated into the Garuda Indonesia Group in September 1989, but was granted government permission to separate in 1993, although the split did not actually take place until April 1997. The airline was jointly owned by the Indonesian Government (93.2%) and Garuda Indonesia (6.8%).
In February 2014, due to the airline's inability to pay its employees salary or benefits for three consecutive months, 50 out of 178 pilots resigned. The same month, Merpati suspended all services due to cashflow problems, including an inability to obtain fuel on credit, obliging the company to pay cash. On 24 July 2014 it was reported that the Indonesian Ministry of Finance had decided not to reopen the company following the airlines' accumulating a debt of 7.9 trillion Rp, as well as the failure of a debt-to-equity-swap plan proposed by the company.
In late 2016 the Ministry of State Owned Enterprises stated that the airline might be able to resume commercial flights in 2017 following a restructuring plan and government cash injection.
On 14 November 2018, the Panel of Judges of the Commercial Court decided to approve the peace proposal of PT Merpati Nusantara Airlines with its creditors held at the District Court (PN), Surabaya, East Java. Thus, PT Merpati Nusantara Airlines was declared not bankrupt.
Livery
Xi'an MA-60, registration PK-MZE, built 2011, serial number 501 Ngurah Rai International Airport (DPS), Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia, 17 May 2016
