Indonesia's leading Garuda airliner resumes flights to Taipei

JAKARTA, May 25 (Xinhua) -- After an eight-year hiatus, Indonesia's leading flag carrier PT Garuda Indonesia has resumed its Jakarta-Taipei route, a media reported here on Friday.

"Through the reopening of this route, Garuda can hopefully bridge and increase trade and tourism between the two cities," said Elisa Lumbantorian, Garuda's executive vice president for marketing and sales.

"Besides that, through a code share with China Airlines, Garuda Indonesia users will be able to continue their flights to several other destinations such as San Fransisco and Los Angeles," he was quoted by the Jakarta Globe as saying.

The firm, which dropped the Taipei route in 2004, will serve the resumed circuit with a B737-800NG which has 156 seats, 12 of them in business class.

The vice president, who symbolically saw off the first flight serving the route at the Soekarno-Hatta international airport late on Thursday, said that the daily flight leaves Jakarta at 11:45 p. m. and arrives in Taipei at 6:15 a.m.; the flight leaves for Jakarta again at 9:50 a.m. and arrives in Jakarta at 2:10 p.m..

Elisa said that the reopening of the route was part of the airline's expansion of services and networks. Garuda last month opened a new route linking Denpasar in Bali to Haneda in Japan.

PT Garuda Indonesia is also scheduled to receive 21 new aircraft this year. The new arrivals will bring the airline's fleet to 105 aircraft with an average age of 5.8 years. In 2015, the fleet will have 194 aircraft. 

Sourced: Phnom Penh post