Image: Garuda will fly every day to Beijing. Credit: garuda-indonesia.com.
Garuda Indonesia plans to add flights from Beijing to Denpasar to support the government’s efforts to increase tourist visits to various tourism destinations in eastern Indonesia, as well as Bali visits.
“Starting from April, 2018, we will fly from Beijing to Denpasar every day,” said Garuda Indonesia Beijing branch General Manager, Hans Haliono, on Thursday. At the moment, the national carrier flies to the Chinese capital five days a week, which is Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
For those flight schedules, Garuda uses Boeing 777-300ER aircraft that can take up to 360 passengers.
According to the Beijing office manager, the airline will add the flights from Beijing to Denpasar to support the government efforts in fulfilling the three million Chinese tourist visits to various destinations in Indonesia. Last year, the two million visits targeted were missed, because of the Mount Agung eruption in Bali, that caused a temporary closure of I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport. “There were cancelations of approximately 90 thousand passengers during October to December, 2017, due to the eruption and subsequent airport closure,” Hans said to antaranews.com.
Nevertheless, the passengers that travelled from China to Indonesia by Garuda increased from 770,444 passengers in 2016 to 887,389 in 2017.
Garuda will also fly every day from Shanghai to Denpasar starting from April. Recently they have only been flying three times a week. Garuda also flies Beijing-Jakarta and Chengdu-Denpasar four times a week, Zhengzhou-Denpasar three times a week, Xi’an-Denpasar twice a week, and Shenyang-Denpasar and Kunming-Denpasar once a week.
At the moment, Garuda is flying Shanghai-Jakarta, Guangzhou-Jakarta, Guangzhou-Denpasar, and Hong Kong-Denpasar every day.