The flight from Jakarta should have been routine. PK-GZC, a Boeing 737-497 that had been flying since 1992, had accumulated over 35,000 airframe hours and 37,000 cycles without serious incident. The crew was experienced, at least on paper -- Komar had 3,703 hours on the 737 type. But the approach into Yogyakarta went wrong early. The aircraft was traveling too fast, and the first officer recognized the danger. He called for a go-around -- standard procedure when approach parameters are not met. The captain ignored the call. When the wheels finally hit the runway, they were far past the point where a safe stop was possible. The aircraft blew through the end of the runway, smashed through fencing, and slammed across a road before halting in a waterlogged rice field. Airport fire-suppression vehicles could not reach the wreckage quickly enough. Most of the 140 people on board escaped, but those who could not move fast enough were trapped in the burning fuselage.

Garuda Indonesia's safety problems did not begin with Flight 200. Australian aviation experts had rated the airline as having one of the worst safety records among the world's national carriers. Since 1950, Garuda had experienced 13 major accidents. The most recent before this crash, in 2002, was Garuda Indonesia Flight 421, which ditched into the Bengawan Solo River after both engines flamed out from hail ingestion, killing a flight attendant. Flight 200 brought international attention that could no longer be deflected. The European Union banned all Indonesian airlines from its airspace in June 2007, three months after the crash. For a national carrier with ambitions to serve global routes, the ban was not merely embarrassing -- it was an existential threat.

Captain Komar initially claimed a sudden downdraft and possible flap malfunction caused the overrun. The investigation told a different story. Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee, assisted by Australia's Transport Safety Bureau and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, recovered the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder from the wreckage. The recorders were flown to ATSB headquarters in Canberra for analysis, using equipment not yet available in Indonesia. The evidence pointed to pilot error: excessive approach speed and a failure to execute the go-around that the first officer had called for. The copilot testified that he had blacked out from severe buffeting during the final moments. On 6 April 2009, Komar was convicted of negligence and sentenced to two years in prison. The Garuda Pilots Association and the Indonesian Pilots Federation threatened a strike. Five months later, the Indonesian High Court overturned the conviction, finding prosecutors had not proven Komar "officially and convincingly guilty of a crime." The case was later cited by the American Bar Association as evidence that criminalizing aviation accidents undermines safety investigations.

The EU ban became the catalyst Garuda could not have chosen but desperately needed. The airline launched its Quantum Leap program, a five-year overhaul of safety protocols, fleet composition, and service standards. Aging aircraft were retired and replaced; the fleet nearly doubled with newer Boeing 737-800s and Airbus A330-300s. Training programs were restructured. New routes to Amsterdam and London were planned -- destinations that required the European ban to be lifted first. In June 2009, two years after the crash, the EU removed Garuda from its blacklist. The airline resumed European service with a Jakarta-to-Amsterdam route via Dubai shortly afterward. What had begun with 21 deaths in a Yogyakarta rice field ended with an airline that bore little resemblance to the one that had let Flight 200 proceed. The runway at Adisucipto, where the 737 had overshot, would eventually be supplemented by a new international airport for the Yogyakarta region, built in part because the old field's limitations had been laid bare.