Established in 1947, the airline was called Garuda Indonesian Airways. The Garuda Indonesian is the national carrier of Indonesia. The name comes up after the holy bird Garuda of Hindus which is also on the national emblem of the country. The airline has the base at Soekarno–Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, near Jakarta.
Skytrax rated the airline has 5-star on 11th December 2014. In 2009, the airline decided to completely rebrand the company with a new logo, aircraft, uniforms, and facilities. In 2011, the airline flew 17.1 million passengers and saw an increase of 39% from 2010.
The fleet
The aircraft of the airlines are maintained by GMF AeroAsia. Garuda Indonesian has Boeing 777-300ER on longer routes and Airbus A330-200 on shorter routes. The Airbus 330-300 is used on medium- haul routes on international and domestic destinations. The Boeing 737-800 flies on domestic and regional routes and long-haul flights. The airline also flies ATR-72-600 since 2013 on inter-island routes to airports in the eastern part of Indonesia. The airline has 144 flights in service at the moment.
Destinations
The airline operates to 133 destinations and 14 countries with 500 daily departures from Jakarta, Denpasar, Makassar, and Medan. Garuda Indonesian airlines serve Asia, Europe, and Australia. It serves Singapore, Shanghai, Tokyo, Amsterdam and London with increasing routes across the globe.
Business Class
The business class is available on all aircraft except the ATR 72-600, older A330-300 and Bombardier CRJ1000. The new Airbus A330-300 added recently in 2016 will have the modern business class facilities. This includes 180-degree recline, B/E Super Diamond seat, storage space and 16-inch touch-enabled entertainment screen. But the number of seat decreases from 36 to 24. The airline will have the all new Panasonic eX3 in-flight entertainment system.
Onboard Facilities
A range of hot meals and beverages are available with snacks depending on the flight duration and route. Some domestic flights have an option of alcoholic drinks like international flights do. Garuda Indonesian introduced the traditional Indonesia cuisine on the flight in 2011. The cuisine includes nasikuning or regular steamed rice. This comes accompanied with satay, rendang, red snapper in yellow acar sauce, gado-gado grilled chicken rica, fried shrimp in sambal, along with krupuk or rempeyek crackers and potato perkedel and tempeh.
Online booking and Check In
The passengers traveling to Indonesia can complete their immigration process onboard before landing. Hence, the passengers will no longer have to wait in long queue upon arrival at the airport. Online booking is possible with the payment of credit card from select countries. Booking online is a cake walk at Musafir.