Engine trouble forces down Ginandjar's plane

JAKARTA (JP): Engine trouble forced a Garuda Indonesia jet carrying a group of Indonesian pilgrims, including Minister of National Development Planning Ginandjar Kartasasmita, to land in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Saturday.

The passengers on the 192nd haj flight from Indonesia were then brought back to Jakarta. They left for Jeddah and continued on to Mecca in Saudi Arabia on another plane yesterday morning.

"Two of three navigation machines were in trouble," an official at the national carrier's haj post said yesterday. "All the passengers are in good condition."

The GA 7520 flight with 465 passengers on board took off from Halim Perdanakusumah airport on Saturday at 6 p.m. It developed engine trouble about three hours after departure.

In a separate development, nearly 200 Moslems registered to go on a privately-arranged haj pilgrimage were left stranded over the weekend at Soekarno-Hatta Airport in Cengkareng due to immigration problems.

The prospective pilgrims were trying to go to the Holy Land using ordinary green passports rather than the specially issued brown haj passports.

People with brown passports leave for Mecca at Halim Perdanakusumah airport while those with green passports use Soekarno-Hatta.

Each of the pilgrims, who had to stay at the airport for three days until yesterday, paid the private tour agency Rp 11 million (US$4657), almost four million rupiah more expensive than the government-sponsored trip.

The agency reportedly told the pilgrims to just go to the airport and that they would receive their passports and visas there.

Minister of Religious Affairs Tarmizi Taher promised on Saturday that he would take action against the agency. (01)