Garuda Indonesia’s “Presidential” First Class: Is The End Finally Here, Or…?

Garuda Indonesia has an excellent first class product, which I’ve historically ranked as being one of the best in the world. It has been many years since I’ve flown Garuda Indonesia first class, and I was making imminent plans to give the product another try.

While we’ll see this plays out, unfortunately it seems like Garuda Indonesia’s days of offering first class might be numbered, which is hardly surprising. Then again, we’ve seen the airline backtrack on this before, so who knows how this plays out. No matter how you slice it, I don’t know of another airline that takes such a strange approach to managing an entire class of service.

Garuda Indonesia only has two planes with first class

Garuda Indonesia has long been in a challenging financial situation — the airline can’t seem to keep any CEO for a long period of time, and therefore doesn’t have much of a vision. Beyond that, the government provides the airline just enough support to stay in business, but not enough to thrive.

Garuda Indonesia has a fleet of roughly 80 aircraft, though you’ll only find a first class cabin on the carrier’s Boeing 777-300ERs. The airline has eight of these jets, with only two featuring first class, so we’re really talking about a tiny fleet.

In reality, the active fleet is even smaller than that — the 11-year-old plane with the registration code PK-GIG has been parked since January 2026, so the 12-year-old plane with the registration code PK-GIF is the only one currently in service.

Here’s another fun element to this — the two Garuda Indonesia 777s with first class are actually in a special livery for the government of Indonesia. That’s because these are also used as the presidential planes, for official state business. So often the planes will be taken out of regularly scheduled passenger service for that reason, which makes it tough to run a reliable operation.

For a long time there have been discussions of Garuda Indonesia potentially eliminating first class, given that it’s such a small network, and one wonders if it even makes sense. For that matter, Garuda Indonesia used to have first class on eight of its 777s, but reconfigured six of them to remove first class.

Garuda Indonesia has stopped selling first class… for now?

Historically, Garuda Indonesia’s primary route with first class has been the carrier’s flagship 2-3x weekly flight between Jakarta (CGK) and Amsterdam (AMS), which operates with the following schedule:

GA88 Jakarta to Amsterdam departing 10:00PM arriving 7:50AM (+1 day)
GA89 Amsterdam to Jakarta departing 12:05PM arriving 7:55AM (+1 day)

To some that might seem like a random destination for offering first class, but it’s likely a combination of factors. Amsterdam is a SkyTeam hub, and there are also big historical ties between the Netherlands and Indonesia. Now, I still doubt there’s actually huge first class demand, since every time I looked at availability on this flight, it seemed pretty wide open in first class.

However, since the summer of 2025, the airline has primarily been offering first class on its route between Bali (DPS) and Tokyo Narita (NRT), which operates with the following schedule:

GA880 Bali to Tokyo departing 12:20AM arriving 8:50AM
GA881 Tokyo to Bali departing 11:00AM arriving 5:25PM

I of course see the premium leisure demand that might exist in that market, though there’s certainly some irony to the carrier’s only first class route not being out of its primary hub. It’s funny, because Garuda Indonesia has a first class lounge in Jakarta, so I assume that doesn’t get much use anymore. Then again, it previously saw at most eight passengers per day, so I guess that’s not a huge difference regardless.

Anyway, here’s where it gets strange — effective immediately, the airline just isn’t selling first class on any flights through the end of the schedule. The airline still has first class on one aircraft that’s currently in service, but for flight that are scheduled to be operated by the aircraft, first class is simply zeroed out.

It’s entirely possible (and probably even likely) that the airline starts selling first class again soon, and that this is just a temporary situation. But it’s still mighty strange to see an airline with such a random first class schedule, which basically seems to revolve around whether or not the president needs the plane.

So we’ll mark this as “developing” for now. There’s simply no justifiable business case for offering a product that’s available on a single plane that’s in service, especially since Garuda Indonesia first class tickets don’t exactly fly off the shelf.

If first class were to be discontinued, would the airline reconfigure these planes and eliminate first class, sell this as some sort of a “business class plus” product, just seat business class passengers there, or what? Who knows, maybe Garuda Indonesia is just being Garuda Indonesia, and hasn’t decided what it wants to do, and is zeroing out first class in the meantime.

Bottom line

Garuda Indonesia has a great first class product, which is only available on two aircraft (one of which is parked). Historically, the airline has offered first class between Jakarta and Amsterdam, as well as between Jakarta and Tokyo, though more recently, we’ve seen the product available between Bali and Tokyo.

As far as I can tell, Garuda Indonesia has just completely zeroed out first class throughout its network, and there are no more first class seats for sale. You’d think that would be a sign of this product being eliminated, though Garuda Indonesia tends to work in mysterious ways.

What do you make of Garuda Indonesia’s first class situation?