Sempati Air (IATA code: SG; ICAO code: SSR; call sign: Spirow) was founded in December 1968 by PT.Tri Utama Bhakti (PT.Truba) under the name PT Sempati Air Transport and began flights in March of the following year using Douglas DC-3 aircraft.

In the beginning, the airline did not offer regularly scheduled services; instead it offered transportation for oil company workers, but soon thereafter more DC-3s were purchased and the airline received a number of Fokker F27s, and regularly scheduled flights to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Manila were begun.

[citation needed] In 1975, a Boeing 707 was leased from Pelita Air for flights between Denpasar and Tokyo but the route was turned over to Garuda Indonesia by the Indonesian government.

Following continued financial problems, some aircraft were sold or returned to lessors, but it was too late to save the airline and operations ceased in 1998.

[1] Until 1998, Sempati Air flew to a wide variety of destinations, including Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Solo, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Denpasar, Mataram, Singapore, Kupang, Dili, Medan, Padang, Pekanbaru, Batam, Tanjung Pinang, Palangkaraya, Banjarmasin, Balikpapan, Tarakan, Manado, Palu, Kendari, Makassar, Ambon, Jayapura, Timika, and Perth (Western Australia).