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Garuda Indonesia retires B747-400
October 13th 2017
Indonesian flag carrier, Garuda Indonesia, this week became the latest airline to phase out the iconic B747-400. Read More » Garuda’s B747 retirement marked an important milestone: there are now more A380s in passenger service than B747s.
On October 6, Garuda’s sole remaining ‘Jumbo Jet’ – PK-GSH – performed its final revenue services from Madinah to Makassar carrying hajj pilgrims and back later in the day to the airline’s Jakarta base.
Garuda had three B747-400s in its fleet. It took delivery of the trio in 1994 and had the aircraft fitted with 428 seats – 42 in business class and 386 in economy class.
The SkyTeam carrier used to fly the type on its long-haul routes to Amsterdam, Frankfurt and London until they were replaced on the routes by 10 B777-300ERs from 2013.
Since then, the B747s have been flying high-capacity pilgrimage flights to Saudi Arabia as well as to Jakarta-Denpasar, Surabaya and Makassar. Garuda is replacing B737s and A330s with newer aircraft of the same type.
“This corporate action is a sign of Garuda Indonesia's commitment to continue to maintain the quality of service and passenger comfort through the operation of aircraft which average five years of age,” said CEO, former banker Pahala Mansury.
The transformation is challenging. Government-controlled Garuda Indonesia must become more efficient before it took delivery of additional aircraft, Mansury told media in September.
The Garuda president is discussing the deferral of 20 aircraft with Airbus and Boeing. Deliveries of the jets in question were scheduled from this year’s fourth quarter until 2019, Mansury said, without specifying new delivery dates. Garuda has outstanding orders for 50 B737 MAX aircraft and 25 A320neo for its Citilink subsidiary.
“We are in the process of discussing and the discussion has moved in a positive direction,” the Garuda boss said. Mansury has made it his mission to improve the carrier’s current fleet utilization before accepting new deliveries. He said it should be possible to increase the utilization rate from 9 hours and 38 minutes a day to eleven hours, as per industry standard.
Garuda reported a wider net loss for the first half of 2017, hurt partly by the costs of participating in the government’s tax amnesty scheme, but it still hoped to achieve a full-year net profit of approximately US$70 million.
Garuda’s short-haul fleet includes 73 B737-800s and 49 A320s at its Citilink subsidiary, including four A320neo. It has a fleet of 140 Airbus, ATR, Boeing and Bombardier aircraft.
