Originally Posted by
Benny18
As a substitute for the London route, continued Pahala, Garuda will concentrate on opening other international routes. There are three destinations that will be targeted, namely Paris in France, Manila in the Philippines, and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam.
However, the three routes will not be opened this year. As is known, the process of opening an international route requires a long process.
I can see MNL and SGN being sensible routes because they are both regional major cities and suprised GA do not already fly there. But Paris, really? If they are giving up on the 3x weekly B77W to London how do they expect to fill up CDG flights and better (speculation clearly aircraft B77W? / frequency unknown)? Also, most (all?) SkyTeam transfers can be done in AMS already. As I have said above a few times if GA had the B787/A350 then LHR/CDG etc. would make sense (just see VN doing 5 daily B789/A359 flights between LHR/CDG/FRA and HAN/SGN). Even BI can fly a daily B788 to LHR (soon to be direct rather than via DXB), although historically linked but how much traffic daily demand is there? Each regional flag-carrier has the B787/A350 in some form: SQ,MH,TG,VN,BI,CZ,CX,CI,BR(soon),PR and QF and also some regional longer haul low-costters (JQ,TR). Ignoring the A330-900NEO as that'll be for Asia/Australia.
So GA get some B789 and/or A359 to fly a mixture of LHR-CGK and LHR-DPS (just like VN does from LHR to HAN and SGN with the B789). Then do the same with CDG/FRA/AMS. They could still put in a row or two of First, which is what makes GA standout (flown in there a few times and I always saw at least half full). I flew GA86 in Business yesterday and it was slightly better than VN business and plenty of Bali transfers.