Garuda Indonesia Is Considering Discontinuing First Class

Is there a reasonable way to redeem miles for this product before it disappears into the abyss? Like you, just wanna get this checked off the bucket list.

Nina Sulistyowati, the airline’s director of marketing and information technology. The same person is the director of marketing AND information technology?! Is Garuda a five person start-up company?

@Rico
No, likely 3 after restructuring.

This is a bummer, I flew in their First Cabin last December for a dive trip from LHR-CGK and would be sad if they discontinued it as it was amazing.

With the horrific treatment of LGBT ️‍ folks in Indonesia, I can't find any interest in this airline. http://www.towleroad.com/2017/10/gay-sauna-raid/

I flew London Heathrow in F a couple of weeks ago and the agent taking care of me on arrival at CGK said they cut F on the Amsterdam flight within a couple of weeks. It will for now operate on the London route.

Thats too bad, as their Amsterdam route has by far the best F experience of the two, since they use Schippol VIP center. Tansitng AMS is so easy and comfortable with them.

Garuda only has two F class planes, operating on some flights to Europe and Japan. I thought they had this service to get and uphold their Skytrax level 5. Isnt it a must with F class for that level? They are one of only 9 airlines in the world with that top level.

I think they should keep F class. Maybe they could make more profit making space for J and Y seats, but they get quite nice publicity, drawing people to other classes of the airline. Kinda like Emirates has this exclusive brand because of their blingy F class, even though they might not be anywhere close to be the best J or Y.

If they want to reduce cost, do something that really matter. Garuda is wasting enormous amount of fuel on a dayly basis. They configure early, thus wasting loads of fuel on approach. Their crew is payed by actual block time (gate to gate basically), so they taxi slow, they fly flow and low, resulting in burning fuel, but getting higher salary.
Noone want to be behind them on a taxi way, they causes traffic jams. They fly low, hardly ever optimal altitude and bring huge amounts of fuel extra. Most companies has strict fuel economy procedures. Faruda has none, and they fly very expensive.

Stay with F, but rather get policies on fuel management and stop paying the crew actual block hours. Thats my advice.

It make sense to consider eliminating First Class from the least profitable routes.

@Bill n DC: so you gotta stay away from airlines of other countries too, then? Have you read that Qatar, China, Japan, and the United States voted against the abolition of death penalty for LGBT people, so you'll have to avoid EK, EY, QR, JL, NH, UA, DL, AA, and more by that logic. FOH with your holier-than-thou attitude. The state and the company are separate entities.

@Mark: I don't think having a First class is a prerequisite for Skytrax 5-star. BR has no F class yet they were crowned just last year. Also, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "configure early"?

Garuda now has 3 business class configurations for their widebody aeroplanes. The Stelia Solstys we see on their 777, the old 2x2x2 on their A330, and B/E Super Diamond for newer A330-300 planes. The trade off for reconfiguring their J class for the A330 is that there will be a reduction in seat count from 42 to just 24. If anything, in the future I expect them to install Apex Suites so as not to risk the seat count, but that might risk the level of personalisation that can be delivered by their crew.

In any case, I don't suppose we'll see any major changes to their J class, as they deferred deliveries of new aircrafts until 2019.

Bill, you truly are a jerk, being a queer, is SICK, they don't need money from such a moron

um, @Frank v, why are you reading a blog written by a gay man then? Oh, you hadn't noticed?
I guess YOU'RE the moron! And, by the way, you're the sick one too. Find someplace else to spew your nastiness.

The problem is frequent management changes leading to frequent strategy changes. It is the problem here with most SOE’’s, BOD gets appointed for a relatively short period of time.

The previous BOD was better than the current one.

That's unfortunate GARUDA cutting their F class.
And I assume GARUDA won't be launching their LAX route anytime soon due to uncertainty. If they will launch CGK-LHR-CGK by Oct31st 2017 , why not considering CGK- LAX- CGK route as well since the level of safety been upgraded to Category 1 by US FAA last year??
I believe the distance should be almost same miles flying distance .
Come on Garuda Indonesia, why keep postponing your LAX route???

@Mark
I should also add one thing: they have horrible utilization on their widebodies. If you go to FR24, and check each aircraft:

A330: PK-GP(L-Z),GH(A,C,D)
B77W: PK-GI(A,C-K)

You'll notice that, especially on the A330-200s, they will often come in from a short flight such as Surabaya, a short 1h hop from Jakarta, at probably 7 or 8pm, and then only depart again at 10 or 11pm THE FOLLOWING DAY. The planes often spend an upward of 15-20 hours on the ground in Jakarta. Here's one particularly bad example you can go and check right now:

PK-GPL
01 Oct GA425 Denpasar to Jakarta, arrived 10:41PM
04 Oct GA824 Jakarta to Singapore, departed 6:18AM

That plane spent all of 2 and 3 Oct doing, I assume, nothing.

"Oh that could've been maintenance"

PK-GPN
02 Oct GA412 Jakarta to Denpasar, arrived 11:05PM
04 Oct GA886 Denpasar to Chengdu, departed 8:22PM

PK-GPP
Has not flown any flights in the past week.

PK-GPQ
04 Oct GA878 Seoul to Jakarta, arrived 3:31PM
07 Oct GA824 Jakarta to Singapore, departed 6:16AM

Ugh, especially that last one: the plane spent 63 hours on the ground. Doing nothing. And this pattern has kept up since, at least, last July. And it doesn't seem to end.

Lucky, you might want to try Garuda's long-haul business class product. They say it's already so good that passengers don't want to pay for first class. The meal service is ala-carte, no trays. The food is almost the same, except the plating and, and wines/beverages. This is also sad to hear. Why eliminate the entire F class cabin? Why not consider halving the cabin from 8 to 4 suites just like what Singapore did? They could at least still maintain their 5-star service. Although there have been significant cost-cuttings in F class: like the previous business class champagne Billecart-Salmon Rose, is now the second champagne in F class replacing Laurent-Perrier Cuvee Rose.

@razza the only way that the average person has to fight homophobia, government sponsored or other, is with their wallets. Given Garuda is majority owned by the government, then yes why not encourage people to use other airlines as a means of protest? And how do you know the OP doesn't avoid airlines /countries with state sponsored homophobia? A lot of people do. And what if he had replaced persecution of homosexuals with persecution of their religious minorities? Would that still be holier than thou? Or would that be ok with you?

honestly, being a top tier status in garuda and previously top tier in aa and ua, i can tell their loyalty program, sucks.

Nobody care about flying with them anymore and choose the cheapest option between garuda and batik air (full service by lion air). Even crazier, batik C is frequently cheaper than garuda Y. I strongly feel the should keep their F and rebuild their loyalty program completely

Lol. Garuda is a state owned company. Thus, the management is a reflection of the current administration. Full of confused people on what to do, ends up destroying the already good establishment.

@W how do you check those records for each airplane? That is really fascinating information, plus amazing you are able to do that as well.

How do they have so much money to be able to use their planes in that way?

I wonder if there is a way to compare the usage of different A330s in the region. For example, how Singapore uses their A330s vs. Garuda's, Air Asia X's, Thai's, Cathay's, etc. That would be super interesting to compare and contrast and perform calculations on.

Another cause for diminishing income is Garuda frequent flyer program is a disapointment to many. For example; if I buy tickets for a family or group trip, Garuda will only let me claim the miles for just one ticket of the group's.

The domestic market are always looking for other carriers first before considering Garuda. The tickets costs more than others, and you don't get to claim all the miles you're paying for.

The only remaining advantage Garuda over other domestic carriers is its on-time performance.

@BillnDC What on earth has a gay sauna got to do with Garuda? Stay on topic for heaven's sake.