Transiting at CGK
 

Just my short experience to anyone may concern

I flew Saturday 4 May with MH econ. from KL to CGK. I request my luggage to be sent to ATH via CAI. I would fly Egypt Air at May 5, 00.50 business.
After arrival at 17:35 I reached CGK transfer desk and entry visa office next to it. I asked the lady there for my transfer and see replied "wait for the Malaysia airlines crew to guide you".
After 30 minutes I asked again when they will arrive.This time she told me to go upstairs and ask the guard at baggage control.
The guard took me downstairs again, called someone on his radio. Then took pic of me and sent it with WhatsApp. He told me he contacted MH staff and I should wait over there and if I need anything I could go upstairs and find him.
After a while another guard came. Took photo of my boarding pass and told me to wait there about half an hour.
After 40 minutes a group of transiting passengers arrive from Qantas to Turkish for Istanbul. They were escorted by some airport personel. They requested to wait. I told them I was in transit too. I sit among them.
After 10 minutes the airport staff returned and informed the group to follow them upstairs before count them. I wasn't sure if I was included but I decided to follow. It worked. I passed the luggage control and headed to the lounge.
At the gate I showed my passport and boarding pass. The four ladies had a five minute chat, WhatsApp again and radio contact. After 10 minutes they let me through.
On board someone from the gate came in. Thought they were looking for me but fortunately they didn't.
https://i.ibb.co/PGy2tGW/l-a-roport-...itecture-i.jpg


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Thank you for sharing your experience

Based on the above does this mean the established procedure of international-international transit at CGK is either:

1. You inform the crew of the inbound airline (e.g. the MH crew in the above example) about your next itinerary and request for their assistance at the transfer desk, OR
2. You request the airport official at CGK for assistance at the transfer desk (in which case where can you find the help?)

The information given in the airport official website (https://indonesiaairport.com/transit_info/index.htm) states the following:

So it seems that if your international inbound airline is willing to interline your checked baggage to your next internationalo flight, and there is no change in terminal, you should be able to transit without going through custom and immigration?

This is what happened in my case.
Ii cant remember of the terminals there thought.
Once I landed I saw the exit bars and the visa office. Once I got upstairs and passed security I was in the main area of the airport. After a long walk headed to the lounge and to the gate. I'm not sure if I changed terminal. And its funny because MH and MS are flying into/from different terminals.
The whole thing with the security officers coming and taking pics of my passport and boarding pass was weird, reminded me some reports from Cairo airport. Fortunately I had plenty of time.

I tried this too and had a bit of a different experience in Terminal 3.
Firstly the transfer desk is marked as Garuda Indonesia, so if there are no Garuda flights landing then no one is at the transfer desk. I was trying to do an international to international transfer (i.e. a quick turn) but landed late at night so no luck there.
I asked some airport employees who mostly said that I had to go through immigration.
I then asked the immigration officer, who said I needed to ask another guy, who said I need to ask the help desk. The help desk said that I need to ask the transfer desk, but if no one is at the transfer desk, you can just go upstairs.

To make the picture clear: when you arrive at CGK T3, you are in a big hallway with all of the other arrivals. On the right you will first see the visa on arrival desk (and ATMs), which currently costs 500k IDR + a processing fee of 13,500 IDR. Next, you will see a green arrow which marks the transfer desk. Directly after this (and before the duty free shop) there will be an escalator going up (which says security and gates) which is not blocked off. After this, there is a duty free shop then the actual immigration (e-gates and counters and help desk).

At the top of the escalator there is a small security checkpoint. They checked the documents and verified that I was flying on the same airline (wasn’t GA). That seemed acceptable so we proceeded with the security screening and then I went through back into the T3 departures area. If you are on two different airlines, it might be a bit trickier, no guarantees if the desk isn’t open.

Nice to see update after long time
Onve you have access to upper floor via the escalator or the elevator and reach the small check point, that's all you have to do. Looks like the transfer desk is not working properly.
the blue arrow points the transfer desk and the red arrow the way to upper check point before enteirng main hall of T3. Way ahead are the e gates and the visa counters.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...564a6eb408.jpg

Any recent transfer? INT to INT via Cgk on two different tickets?

Question related to topic.

I'm flying KUL-CGK-AMS on Garuda with a whooping 8h transfer at CGK which is all supposedly within Terminal 3. Any issues I should forsee as a result of this day spent at the airport?

I'm Skyteam Elite+ so I figure I'll just bum around in the Garuda lounge ideally but worried there'll be some bureaucratic shenanigans that'll keep me from the main terminal or similar due to the long connection.