Garuda Indonesia flies the skies alongside China Airlines

Indah Setiawati, The Jakarta Post, Bali | Fri, 02/13/2009 3:59 PM 
 

 (JP/Zul Trioanggono)

National flag carrier Garuda Indonesia joined hands with China Airlines Thursday to help expand the airlines' customer base. 

Garuda CEO Emirsyah Satar (second left) and China Airlines president Sun Huang-Hsiang exchanged MOUs on the agreed cooperation, signed in Bali on Thursday. 

The agreement is in the form of a number of code share agreements, including deals that China Airlines can sell a fixed number of seats for Garuda and a Special Prorata Aggrement (SPA), where Garuda can have a special rate for getting passengers to fly with China Airlines. 

Garuda will be entitled to have 90 seats in the China Airlines A330 and B744 flights on the Denpasar-Taipei route and 60 seats for the Jakarta-Taipei route, a double increase on the existing code share agreement. 

The state airline will also get an SPA for routes beyond Taipei such as Japan and America, where China Airlines flies. In exchange, China Airlines will also get an SPA for routes between Jakarta and other regions in the country. 

"This cooperation is a milestone for Garuda," Emirsyah said. 

The companies will also sit together to discuss code share cooperation on routes including Taipei-Singapore-Surabaya, Taipei-Hong Kong-Surabaya and Denpasar-Hong Kong-Taipei. 

Agus Priyanto, Garuda executive vice president for sales and marketing, said Garuda booked US$20 million total revenue last year from cooperation agreements with other airlines. 

"We hope to book $10 million in revenue this year with the new cooperation with China Airlines." 

Sun said the cooperation would benefit both companies, and that it was one of his company's steps to cope with the global economic downturn and its impact on airlines.