Yet another Indonesian airline is starting service, with plans to launch its first operational flight on June 6. Lorena Air has obtained an air operator’s certificate and now only needs to take delivery of a pair of Boeing 737-300s, which President-Director Eka Sari Lorena Surbakti says are currently undergoing maintenance by Malaysia Air System.

Taiwanese airlines are poised for strong growth driven by mainland China in the next few years, even as they struggle now with a stagnant market and heavy losses that forced one carrier, Far Eastern Air Transport, to cease flying last week. Air links with China will probably be opened fully by about 2011, say analysts. That would be a great step forward from the current situation, in which direct flights between the mainland and Taiwan are almost prohibited.

China will push its new civil aircraft company to operate commercially, even though the manufacturer will surely need some kind of subsidy to get its proposed large airliner to market. The demand for a competitive, market-driven performance from Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (CACC) has come from the very top of the government. Premier Wen Jiabao, speaking at the inauguration of the company on May 11, made clear that the project would in no way be an engineers’ playground.