I spoke with the CEO of Garuda Indonesia about the future of the airline.
I am surprised that I am still alive. It is very difficult. It is the most difficult job in Indonesia right now.
I contemplated quitting several times. The challenge is very interesting. I believe in an industry that will benefit the country.
It keeps changing. It's open now in Indonesia, and it's basically no longer aQuarantine. You have to book 4 nights of lodging.
We are excited. Everyone is excited to see people coming back into Indonesia. We are happy to accept tourists here.
Profitability should be our focus.
It is a difficult negotiation to restructure the debt. I am involved in the negotiation. We discussed our business plan with the lessors that will be focused on the domestic market and only fly internationally to a few selected markets.
We want to make sure that we become a profitable company in the future, and the first thing we need to do is focus on the domestic market.
We made a good profit from the domestic market, but we are losing a lot on international markets. One of them was going to London.
If somebody asks about bankruptcy, don't worry about it. Don't worry everybody, including the president of the republican, Garuda will be alive because Garuda is part of this nation.
Garuda Indonesia CEO Irfan Setiaputra
The domestic market of Indonesia is amazing. The domestic market recovered 50% in the first year of the Pandemic. During the last three days, the government announced that there will be no testing for domestic flights. Sales went up 20% or more quickly. I am very optimistic about the future.
Our flights to Australia, Europe, and Japan are starting to make money even though they have very low seat levels. Why? We are focused on cargo. There is a lot of export from Indonesia. We are flying cargo from Manado. We are bringing 25 tons of fish. We don't have passengers. It is a profitable flight.
Amsterdam is going to be maintained by us. We are looking at the possibility of increasing the frequencies of Amsterdam on flights.
We will not return to London because it was unprofitable.
The majority of visitors to Indonesia are interested in going toBali so we will be flying from anywhere in the world.
We have to compete with foreign airlines. Indonesians love to fly with them because they can bring Indonesians everywhere. We are happy that we are only flying to selected destinations.
We are very happy for any airlines that bring people to Indonesia. We are a national flag carrier. The ultimate goal of our presence is actually the economic development of Indonesia.
Garuda Indonesia CEO Irfan Setiaputra
If you want to come to Indonesia first, you can do it via Singapore or Dubai. I like to bring different value offerings to our passengers. In the future, there will be direct non-stop flights to the island.
Jakarta will be maintained the same way as today because it is for business more or less. Tourists prefer to go toBali direct.
We mentioned to our lessor and creditor that we don't see the ability for us to make profit due to the lease being expensive and the limitation of the flight that we have.
I think we are going to keep the B777.
We will continue to use Boeing and A330s for international.
The majority of the B737-800s are domestic. We are going to move the plane to Citilink.
Our friends at Emirates are very good at connecting to the rest of the world because of their location.
Passengers will be brought from other parts of Indonesia to Jakarta. Passengers can fly onward on codeshare flights. We won't be flying directly to Dubai for the time being.
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