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Air France resumes Paris-Jakarta flights
In a move to expand its network in Southeast Asia, French flag carrier Air France officially resumed its daily flights from Paris to Jakarta via Singapore on Thursday
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n a move to expand its network in Southeast Asia, French flag carrier Air France officially resumed its daily flights from Paris to Jakarta via Singapore on Thursday.
Air France KLM senior vice president for Asia Pacific, Patrick Roux, said that Indonesia's strong economic and tourism development had encouraged the airline to reopen the route after it was closed a decade ago following a merger with Dutch airline KLM.
'We want to support this country's booming economy. That's why we decided, on top of the daily KLM flights [to Jakarta], to add a daily Air France flight,' Roux said in a media briefing on Friday.
Roux said that the new destination was an addition to the KLM service, which serves the Jakarta-Amsterdam route daily. It is also a continuation of the airline's service connecting Paris and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which was launched in April 2013.
'With this Air France flight from Paris to Singapore to Jakarta, passengers can combine the way they want. They can fly from Amsterdam to Singapore [with KLM] and then connect the flight to Jakarta, or fly with Air France from Paris to Singapore and then connect to the KLM flight to Denpasar,' Roux said.
'So now, Southeast Asia for us is a connecting platform, a kind of hub in the region that is important for us,' he continued.
Consisting of 303 seats, the 777-300 aircraft that departs from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport has eight La Première (first class) cabins, 67 business seats, 28 premium economy seats and 200 economy seats.
With the newly opened route from Paris to both Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta, Roux said that the airline had increased the airline's capacity by 2.6 percent in Asia.
According to Roux, Asia-Pacific roughly contributes 25 percent to Air France's long-haul activity in the Asia Pacific.
'The two main markets [in the Asia Pacific] are Japan and China. But now Southeast Asia is the third one and it's where the potential for growth is. So the plan of development in the region is in Southeast Asia,' he said.
He added that the Paris-Jakarta route would mainly cater to business passengers, as well as leisure passengers.
'In destinations where we only have leisure traffic, usually it's not suitable enough and we need to close it after a few years. So, we have to start on a strong base of business and then also high share in tourism,' Roux said.
Air France initially planned to revive the route in March this year, but the overcrowded Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang forced the company to reschedule.
'The crowded airport is basically a sign that the demand is here. It's the reason why we initially wanted to open this flight once again. It's better to operate in a busy airport than in an empty airport,' Roux said.
To help expand its presence in the region, Air France inked a code share agreement with state-owned carrier Garuda Indonesia on Friday.
Through the agreement, Air France will be able to connect to Surabaya, East Java and Denpasar, while Garuda will be able to extend the connection to Paris and Nanthes, France, from Amsterdam.
