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Sriwijaya adds 3 new China routes
April 28th 2017
Indonesia’s Sriwijaya Air will launch three new routes in June: Jakarta-Nanning, Denpasar-Nanning and Jakarta-Haikou, Sriwijaya commercial director, Toto Nursatyo, told Xinhua. Read More »
"China is our main target,” Nursatyo said, adding the three new routes would complement the airline’s existing eight charter routes to China, including flights from Guangzhou, Wuhan, Changsha, Nanjing, Zhangjiajie and Foshan to Denpasar and Manado.
The Sriwijaya executive explained that the airline has rights to fly to 48 cities in China, but would focus on the eight above-mentioned destinations in 2017.
“This year, we will receive 12 new aircraft so we will be able to bring in more tourists […] China now accounts for 80% of our international network and we will expand our network to Australia and India,” Nursatyo added.
Sriwijaya’s bread-and-butter business continues to be Indonesian domestic services. In 2016, the airline carried approximately 600,000 foreign passengers, with 350,000 coming from China. It expects to double these numbers to 1 million and 650,000 in 2017.
Sriwijaya plans to take delivery of 13 aircraft this year, comprising 11 B737NGs and two B777-300ERs, its first wide body aircraft.
The Indonesian government is aggressively targeting Chinese tourists known for their high spending. In 2017, Indonesia aims at 2.1 million tourist arrivals from China, a steep increase on last year’s 1.43 million.
Other Indonesian carriers have been adding significant capacity in the Indonesia-China market over the past two years, although this was mostly done quietly without much fanfare, also because the majority of these routes are operated as charter services rather than regular scheduled flights.
Just looking at Sichuan, for instance, Lion Air operates twice-weekly Denpasar-Changsha flights, four-weekly Chongqing-Denpasar and weekly Chengdu-Denpasar flights.
In the interim, Indonesian flag carrier, Garuda Indonesia, also has its sights set on China. After increasing capacity on routes to Beijing and Shanghai by deploying larger B777-300ER aircraft, Garuda still plans to launch a Denpasar-Chengdu nonstop route. Originally earmarked to commence in January the route launch has been postponed with a new tentative launch planned for July.
Garuda also wants to add regular scheduled services from Denpasar to Shenzhen, Kunming, Chongqing and Xiamen.
Like Sriwijaya, Garuda also operates a significant number of weekly charters to China. From June, it has rostered a weekly A330 between Jakarta and Guilin.
Indonesia AirAsia will boost its China operations with new flights between Jakarta and Shenzhen this year, as well as a new route between Jakarta and Macau. The airline will add an A320 and an A330 in 2017, growing its fleet to 26 aircraft.
