Jakarta Globe, Farid Firdaus, Jul 13, 2015
Jakarta. Garuda Indonesia, the national flag air carrier, will spend as much as $1.85 billion to acquire 24 new planes over the next three years.
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| Garuda Indonesia is set for massive expansion after a series of plane purchases. (Antara Photo/Yusran Uccang) |
Jakarta. Garuda Indonesia, the national flag air carrier, will spend as much as $1.85 billion to acquire 24 new planes over the next three years.
The new
fleet includes 11 Airbus A330s, nine ATR turboprop planes, three Boeing
777-300s and one 737-Max. The state-controlled carrier has started the purchase
this year, ordering up to 15 new aircraft.
I Gusti
Ngurah Akshara, director of finance and risk management at Garuda Indonesia,
said that the aircraft began arriving in Indonesia starting from June this year
and keep coming through December 2017.
About 80
percent of the order will be financed through an operating lease, while the
remaining 20 percent will be through a financial lease, according to the
director. Still, he pointed out that the scheme may change in the next three
year “depending on market condition and internal management.”
The new
order follows Garuda Indonesia’s $20 billion deal with Airbus in Paris last
month in which the airline is slated to acquire 30 787-900 Dreamliners aircraft
and 30 737-Max jets.
“The
initial agreement in Paris is estimated to supply aircraft until 2025. We’re
still evaluating the next process,” the finance director said.
Garuda
Indonesia is planning to add nine more units of wide-body aircraft to its fleet
— which currently has 22 wide-body aircrafts — in a target to operate as much
as 53 units of wide-body aircrafts by 2025, according to the company’s president
director Arif Wibowo.
Last month
Arif was quoted by local media saying the State-Owned Enterprises Minister Rini
Soemarno asked the airline to grow its fleet to 450 aircraft in the next five
years from its current fleet of 136 aircraft as of the first quarter, according
to Reuters.
Improving
financial performance
After
reversing last year’s losses to a $11.4 million net profit in the first three
months of the year, Akshara said that the airline’s first-half performance is
slated to improve on the back of Garuda Indonesia’s $62 million efficiency
efforts.
“The growth
of revenue and net profit for the second quarter of the year is better than the
quarter before. Up until June, we’ve lowered costs by more than 14 percent,” he
said, adding that Garuda Indonesia aims to trim up to $212 million of cost by
year-end.
Akshara
also said that Garuda Indonesia’s improving financial performance is backed by
the positive performance of subsidiaries, such as the aircraft maintenance and
facility unit Garuda Maintenance Facility and low-cost unit Citilink.
Garuda
Indonesia is aiming for $4.4 billion in revenue this year, up 12 percent from
last year’s revenue of $3.93 billion.
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