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Garuda Increases Flight Capacity for the Holiday Season
02 December 2019 | Written by Chris Alexander

Garuda Indonesia have announced they will offer 2,495 additional seats to their scheduled flights over the Christmas and New Year period, to accommodate the increased number of passengers expected to fly over the holidays.

From 20th December 2019 until 6th January 2020, Indonesia’s national flag carrier will deploy wide-body aircraft, such as the Boeing 777 and Airbus 330, in order to offer more seats to customers. Especially popular routes, such as those connecting Bali with major cities like Surabaya and Jakarta, will benefit most from the upsize, as a surge in demand for travel to these locations is expected.

“Using wide-body aircraft is much more effective than adding flights,” explains Garuda Indonesia’s commercial director Pikri Ilham Kurniansyah. “The first benefit is, normal air traffic can be maintained; adding flights also increases the risk of delays because of increased air traffic,” he added.

Garuda have not ruled out supplementing the holiday service with additional flights – especially to locations such as Labuan Bajo, which cannot accommodate wide-body aircraft but is nonetheless expecting an influx of tourists.

The December-January holiday period is traditionally one of Indonesia’s busiest times for domestic air travel, with passenger numbers increasing steadily year-on-year. Pikri estimates a 2- to- 3 per cent increase in the holiday traffic this year, compared to the same period last season.