This airline needs to make up its mind! To give you just a taste of the drama that has unfolded over Garuda Indonesia's flight to London, here is a brief history:
Continue reading: Garuda Indonesia Adjusts London Route… Again
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
I am hoping we'll see the return of GA first class on long-haul routes, whether it being London or some other city.
Bookings still show a nonstop with 777 departing Tue, Thu, and Sat as previously announced. He's just lying to make the shares jump. Someone must've told him that the range wouldn't even be possible for the current A330 planes in their fleet unless they're talking about the upcoming A330-900neo
The only real change that I believe has been put in place is that they'll be using Terminal 4 at Heathrow, with other SkyTeam members, rather than Terminal 3. I can only hope premium passengers are allowed access to the Etihad lounge (surely Etihad could use any extra penny), in addition to the godawful SkyTeam lounge there.
sell the slots and move on from London. Singapore and the UK are full of people who will only fly their flag carrier and will not choose the Garuda option anyways.
"While I appreciate that Garuda is struggling"
You and I appreciate very different things.
I'm really surprised Garuda couldn't make the LHR-CGK route nonstop work. If they can somehow market to the folks flying from the UK to Australia perhaps then I can see it possibly work. I'd much rather transit in CGK than in DXB or DOH.
I may be wrong but it looks like you've missed a hell of a lot of one stop options?
Jet Airways via BOM and DEL? Air India?
LH, AF, LX, KL etc?
TK?
Iberia? Aeroflot?
Yet you've included Sri Lankan and Oman Air?
Again maybe I'm wrong and they just don't fly to CGK, but Germany, France, & India and their respective airlines are certainly more important than Oman & Sri Lanka!
As an indonesian, i hate to say this but its a dumb move for garuda to switch it to the A330 with a stop in singapore.. why? Simply there are a lot of better option than garuda in this route.. i know a lot of indonesian will choose singapore airlines over garuda because SIA has this luxurious image among indonesian that is quite difficult to compete with.... I think garuda should buy a lot of 787 to replace the A330. Why? Because the 787 is smaller and more efficient and garuda can open up a lot of route from CGK and DPS such as
DPS=DME
CGK-CDG
CGK-FRA
@K4:
"I may be wrong but it looks like you’ve missed a hell of a lot of one stop options?
Jet Airways via BOM and DEL? Air India?
LH, AF, LX, KL etc?
TK?
Iberia? Aeroflot?
Yet you’ve included Sri Lankan and Oman Air?
Again maybe I’m wrong and they just don’t fly to CGK, but Germany, France, & India and their respective airlines are certainly more important than Oman & Sri Lanka!"
You answered it by yourself:
LH, AF, LX, IB, and SU don't directly fly to Jakarta (anymore).
KL has a stop in KUL.
nah mate, neither Jet Airways nor Air India flies to CGK. Nor does Lufthansa, Air France, Swiss, or Aeroflot. Iberia doesn't even fly to Asia, let alone Jakarta.
KLM flies from AMS to CGK with a stop in KUL, so it would be a two stop flight. AF and LH stopped CGK services a few years ago (both also had additional stops).
Turkish is indeed missing though, and so is Saudia, Vietnam, Philippines et al.
But to add Oman Air is starting to become a legitimate player in Jakarta.
@david@hartonosport.com
Yeahh, I have a lot of Indonesian friends who insist on only flying Singapore, or Cathay. But GA buying up a lot of 787s won't help solve the problem. The thing is, not a lot of Indonesians value a pricier direct flight when there are tonnes of other (possibly better) options at cheaper prices.
If anything, they better utilise those A330neos for good LH use.
@K4 - Either people (YOU) cannot read English well, or choose not to. Ben did say "off the top of his head" ...and he would have selected UL and Oman since he has flown them several times. Important "in your small minded world" means little to reality of the traveling public.
I did clearly say that I might be wrong.
To compare Oman to India or Sri Lanka to Germany is indeed ludicrous.
Oh, and it wasn’t Ben who wrote this article; it was James.
I accept that those airlines don’t fly there, but this blog’s favouritism towards Oman air is a bit concerning considering how limited their destinations are.
The main issue is this is a government owned airline in which government is changing management about every other month. There is zero consistency left and GA will need ro be careful to not lose that 5th star.
This airline improved a lot when Satar was the CEO dor several years as he and his team had a consistent strategy.
Right now they are all over the place.
There is definitely a big market out of Indonesia. But prices have gone up too far and GA has outpriced itself. Now making it worse by adding a stop in Singapore where about everyone else stops.
They need to work on their marketing as well, it was way better about 3-4 years ago.
@Joey: the problem with CGK is that it has very few flights to Australia to connect to. I think I count 4 (1 PER, 1 MEL and 2 SYD) and they aren’t daily. There are lots more options in SIN, KUL or even DPS.
While I’ve only transited in DXB once years ago and have never been to DOH, CGK would not be an airport of choice for me for transits, even though it has seen vast improvement over the years.
Good to see a new Garuda photo at the top, but I see the same old one still made an appearance further down. Those people have been seen by an awful lot of people, an awful lot of times, haha.
James, you are conflating stops and connections. Most (all? ) of the alternatives you list are a single connection, not a single stop. With one stop the same plane does both legs. That means that the time in Singapore is guaranteed to be as short as possible and there is no chance of reaching Singapore and discovering there is no aircraft for the next leg because you just flew in on it.
Passengers may or may not need to de-plane in Singapore - you didn't bother to say. If they stay on board then the stop is less inconvenient.
Lots of choices for Jakarta ,other than Garuda which I would take . How is their engineering record these days , used to be a very risky airline in the 80s .
@ Bour - GA haven't announced how long the stop in SIN will be yet.
I agree it will probably be the quickest way between the two cities however their competitors can offer better frequencies, even if the journey takes slightly longer which is also valuable.
The likely GA LHR departure time (mid evening) is not ideal for business travellers vs say SQ who have four flights per day.
@Joey / @Melvin,
The LHR/CGK/MEL connections only work well twice a week. When they do, the southbound flight combo gets in around 21:30 elapsed time.
However for my northbound return it was MEL/DPS/CGK/LHR with 8 hours in Denpasar (which was fine as I caught a taxi out to Seminyak for lunch) and then overnight in Jakarta. I was happy to do it for a sub-A$2k J Class flight.
The trick is getting the direct flights between CGK and MEL or SYD on the same day the LHR flight operates, rather than the DPS / MEL¦SYD days.
Most people couldn't be bothered trying to line them up, so catch another airline. I however enjoyed the adventure.
I don't get it. Presumably they would use A330-200 with Trent 700 engines. Which have range up to 7,250nm (with Pax and checked baggages only) while the direct range for CGK-LHR is around 6,340nm.
They also fitted their A330-200 with pretty light config with 222 pax in 2 class config. Taking account other aspects like weather and payload. They don't need to have stopover in SIN.\
Unless they are dumb enough to use A330-300 instead of A330-200.
The route has been adjusted again, now with a direct flight to DPS on the outbound, with connections available to Australia (SYD,MEL,PER) with the return flight operating via Jakarta, albeit a 737 from DPS-CGK to then pick up the 777 on the return. Rumour has it this will become a direct service when runway adjustments are made at DPS, considering they can handle an A380 a fully laden 777 wouldnt be to much of an issue!
I wouldnt be surprised to see British Airways or even a remote chance of Virgin Atlantic also launching a direct to DPS with 787 equipment.
TN07FEBLONDPS
DPS DENPASAR-BALI.ID 07FEB19 14FEB19
1 GA 087 4 LHR 4 DPS I 2155 2115+1 0 07FEB19 28FEB19 773 15:20
2 GA 087 26 LHR 4 DPS I 2155 2130+1 0 09FEB19 26FEB19 773 15:35