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Garuda to reopen Jakarta-London route
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A Garuda Indonesia aircraft. (Shutterstock.com/e X p o s e)
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lag carrier Garuda Indonesia president director I Gusti Ngurah Askhara said on Monday that the airline would reopen its Jakarta-London route after reviewing its costs.
He said the Jakarta-London route would involve a transit in Singapore, starting on Nov. 15.
“We will revive the route after seeing that the market is growing. But we [need to] review its costs,” said Askhara in Denpasar as reported by Antara news agency on the sidelines of an event.
The review includes replacing the Boeing 777 with Airbus 330-300 planes used on the route, he said, adding that it would make the route more efficient because of a higher seat occupancy rate.
On Oct. 30, Garuda Indonesia stopped its Jakarta-London route because of a low seat occupancy rate, said Askhara’s predecessor Pahala Mansury.
Askhara said the seat occupancy rate on the halted route was 60 to 70 percent, but he saw that recently a growing number of tourists were traveling from the United Kingdom to Indonesia. Therefore, he added, the airline was considering to shift the route to a Denpasar-London route.
Statistics Indonesia’s (BPS) Bali branch recorded that the UK was the fourth biggest contributor to tourist arrivals to Bali after China, Australia and India.
BPS data shows 210,262 British tourists visited Bali from January to September, 9.3 percent higher than the figure in the corresponding period in 2017. British tourists made up 4.5 percent of the 4.64 million tourist visits to the island during that period. (bbn)
