Gliders and a Harley engine

Indonesian aviation began with improvisation. In 1946, in the middle of the war of independence, air force officers including Wiweko Soepono and Nurtanio Pringgoadisurjo opened a workshop at Magetan and built gliders from whatever they could find. In 1948 Wiweko flew a small aircraft, the WEL-X, powered by a Harley-Davidson engine. Nurtanio led a 15-man experimental section at Bandung that flew the all-metal Sikumbang on 1 August 1954, and in the 1960s a Polish licence deal produced 44 Gelatik utility aircraft. Nurtanio died in a test-flight accident in March 1966, and the air force’s aviation institute was renamed LIPNUR in his honour.

Habibie comes home

The man who turned workshops into an industry was Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie. A German-trained engineer, he had been working at Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm since 1965 when Pertamina’s chief Ibnu Sutowo visited him in Düsseldorf in December 1973 with a plan for an Indonesian aircraft industry. Habibie came home, became President Suharto’s technology adviser in January 1974, and signed licences with MBB and CASA that September. On 26 April 1976 LIPNUR and Pertamina’s technology division were merged into PT Industri Pesawat Terbang Nurtanio, with Habibie as president and CEO. Suharto opened the Bandung works that August. The first products were licence-built: the NBO 105 helicopter and the NC212 Aviocar.

Half a transport aircraft

IPTN’s ambition was to design, not just assemble. In 1979 it formed Airtech with Spain’s CASA to build a twin-turboprop transport, the CN-235. The first CASA prototype flew on 11 November 1983 and the first IPTN-built one on 30 December 1983. Workshare was roughly 65 per cent Bandung, 35 per cent Getafe, whichever country assembled the aircraft, and low Indonesian wages helped keep the price down. More than 240 CN-235s are in service worldwide, mostly with air forces. Meanwhile IPTN licence-built Pumas, Super Pumas, BK 117s and Bell 412s, and in October 1985 it dropped Nurtanio from its name to become Industri Pesawat Terbang Nusantara, after the archipelago.

Gatotkaca takes off

The national dream was the N250, a regional airliner in the 64 to 68-seat class with fly-by-wire controls, an unusual feature for a turboprop of its time. First unveiled in the late 1980s, the prototype PA-1, named Gatotkaca after a flying hero of the wayang shadow-puppet stories, flew on 10 August 1995. A second prototype flew in December 1996. IPTN picked Mobile, Alabama, for an American assembly line, and planned a stretched jet, the N2130. At its peak the company employed about 9,670 people. Habibie, by now a minister, made IPTN the flagship of his high-technology plan for the nation.

Rice, the IMF and a new name

Then the money ran out. In 1996 Indonesia traded two CN-235s to Thailand for 110,000 tonnes of sticky rice, a barter that drew mockery at home. When the Asian financial crisis hit, the IMF’s US$43 billion rescue required the government to stop funding the N250, about halfway through its flight tests. The N2130 was cancelled too. Habibie became president in 1998, but could not save his project. IPTN cut its payroll from 9,670 to 3,720 and on 24 August 2000 was relaunched as PT Dirgantara Indonesia. The CN-235, the licence lines and the Bandung works carried on under the new name.

المصانع

• Bandung works · Husein Sastranegara airport, Bandung, West Java — Main site, inaugurated by Suharto on 23 August 1976
• Planned American Regional Aircraft Industry plant · Mobile, Alabama — Chosen in 1995 for N250 assembly; never built

الناس

• B. J. Habibie · president and CEO; later President of Indonesia — Ran IPTN from 1976; championed the N250
• Nurtanio Pringgoadisurjo · aviation pioneer — Designed the Sikumbang; IPTN was first named after him
• Wiweko Soepono · pioneer — Built the WEL-X with a Harley-Davidson engine in 1948
• Ibnu Sutowo · head of Pertamina — Recruited Habibie in 1973

الأرقام القياسية والأولويات

• CN-235 accumulated more than 500,000 flight hours across all versions