TravellingChris

What are the chances of any airline establishing non-stop service from CGK to London, Paris or Frankfurt? Would British Airways, Air France or Lufthansa consider such a route, or would Jakarta be too far off the beaten path in their perception?

IluvSQ

Garuda flies to AMS non stop

plunet

And Garida used to fly to London. GA86.

Ignoring the period of time when GA were restricted from flying into Europe due to safety concerns, the main issue with their Europe services used to be that they couldn't load the 777s that they used for the service fully due to weight restrictions on the runway pavement at CGK. So they were unable to sell all the seats and/or cargo space on both their LHR and AMS services and on long sectors to Europe that really hurts the economics of the route.

I think the runway limitation is probably the fundamental reason that CGK has never taken off as a hub airport similar to SIN, KUL, BKK and has struggled even with Kangaroo route connections between Europe and Australia. With the airport and the city of Jakarta both sinking I wonder if it will ever be fixed.

There was a whole bunch of shenanigans in 2018/19 when GA were messing around with their LHR service and ended up pulling it and substituting passengers bookings between LHR and CGK with LHR AMS on KL and AMS to CGK on their service. There's a whole thread of woe and rebookings Garuda London - Jakarta zero'd out in GDS for W18-19 The service to AMS has been much more consistently served than LHR.

IAN-UK

And for a very brief period it looked as though I was going to get a direct, non-stop London Medan flight. Sadly Garuda's ill-fated LHR Bali service, through Medan (KNO) for operational reasons, never really took off.

I think KLM is the last European carrier offering a direct service to Jakarta. The Lufthansa tag-flight through Singapore ended quite some years back. Turkish has non-stops to both Jakarta and Bali and was said to be mulling over Medan.

ElaineWChatman

It's too bad more direct routes from Jakarta haven't worked out long term. The runway issues do sound limiting. Have you looked into flying KLM then? At least it's one connection instead of two. Maybe Turkish would consider Jakarta more if they had success in Medan. Out of curiosity, have you flown Garuda's AMS route before? Despite the challenges, hope they or another airline can try Europe direct again someday.

siw

Seems CGK is just one more city where the three Middle East airlines (EK, EY and QR) can beat the competition by funnelling flights from countless European cities through their hubs then on to countless South/South East Asian cities. KLM and GA to AMS is for historical reasons between the countries. My guess is we'll not see other European airlines venture back to CGK which is the furtest away if the SE Asian capital cities, also just look at a BA not returning to KUL (although MH does do 2x daily to LHR with the A350).

But GA also did not do themselves any favours: they never took up a more suitable B77W replacement (ie A350, B787) unlike all their neighbours (they have a few A339) and the nonsense schedule messing about with LHR, which the above hyperlink covers in depth. I recall GA intended for the Kangeroo route, via DPS, but the schedule times were not ideal compared with the considerable competition.

I was lucky to fly GA First between LHR-CGK twice - best flights I have ever had. The outbound was direct but the return was via SIN, as mentioned before due to weight restrictions of the CGK runways thus a lightly fuelled B77W to SIN then filling up the tanks.

soy

TK fly direct. I will fly with them to CGK in 2024

IAN-UK

I've never taken the KLM flight. Turkish became my airline of choice, they have daily direct services to Jakarta and Denpasar-Bali: their post-covid fares have crept up though