S

tate oil and gas producer PT Pertamina has agreed to provide aviation fuel (avtur) for national flag carrier PT Garuda Indonesia’s airplanes flying to five foreign destinations including  Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Dubai.

Ahmad Faisal, the director of Pertamina commerce and marketing, said in Jakarta on Wednesday that the company would cooperate with local avtur distributors in providing the fuel to Garuda airplanes.

“In Hong Kong, for instance, we will work with World Wide Fuel,” Ahmad said following the signing of the two-year contract agreement. He added that under the deal, Garuda would no longer need to directly pay local distributors for the avtur when flying to the five destinations.

Last year Garuda used about 1 billion liters of avtur for its operations and about 65 percent of the total was provided by Pertamina.

“With this agreement, the avtur supply from Pertamina is expected to reach 80 percent of Garuda’s total consumption,” the airline’s operation director Capt. Ari Sapari said, adding that this year, Garuda’s total avtur consumption was projected to increase by 20 percent to 1.2 billion liters  due to the opening of new routes.

Garuda  plans to add 15 new routes by 2012, five of them being to European countries. “This year, we will add 10 more new routes both domestic and international,” Garuda spokesman Pudjobroto said.

Some of the new domestic destinations include Ternate, Palu, Ambon and Bengkulu, while the international destinations include Amsterdam via Dubai, Taipei in Taiwan and Brisbane, Australia.

“We will fly to Taipei in April, while Amsterdam via Dubai and  Brisbane will start in June and October respectively,” Pudjobroto said.  

Garuda also plans to fly to four European cities; Frankfurt, London, Paris and Rome beginning in 2011 or 2012. Garuda, which serves 58 domestic and international routes, operates  Boeing 747-400, 737-800, 737-300 and 737-500 airliners as well as  Airbus 330-300 and 330-200 jets. The airline expects to increase its fleet to 116 aircraft within the next five years from 67 at present.