Garuda Indonesia Loses To Lion Air Group In Market Share, President Director: We Don't Focus On That, The Important Thing Is To Look For Profits

President Director of Garuda Indonesia, Irfan Setiaputra. (Photo: Instagram @setiaputrairfan)

JAKARTA - President Director of Garuda Indonesia, Irfan Setiaputra, admitted that he did not think about market share in the midst of expansive competitors releasing new airlines and routes. The reason, said Irfan, is because Garuda prefers to focus on profitability.

Based on data from the Ministry of Transportation, the number of full service passengers for both Garuda Indonesia and Batik Air has fallen since 2019. In 2020, the decline will be sharper and Garuda, which was previously the leader in the full service market, must step down to be replaced by Batik Air. Contractions continued until last year which caused Garuda to fall behind.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us many things, one of which is where we want to focus. We think that we should focus on profitability, not market share. With the hope of course from time to time, of course we will take care of this market share ," he told VOI when met at the Garuda Indonesia office, quoted Wednesday, June 8.

Furthermore, Irfan also said that he had his own playing area in the aviation industry in the country. This is the difference between Garuda and other airlines. Where Garuda also maintains ticket fares without having to compete with cheap ticket fares with other airlines.

"So you have to know that Garuda is indeed a different playing field from our competitors. So don't expect that Garuda will then commodify its products or services or prices to then compete at a level where our playing fields are lowered," he explained.

"But when we talk about market share, we are talking about groups, including Citilink. So just wait and see," he continued.

As previously reported, the COVID-19 pandemic has not weakened the competition between Garuda Indonesia and Lion Air Group. Competition between these airlines is still high, even though the airline industry is battered by the pandemic in 2020.

Based on data from the Ministry of Transportation (Kemenhub), Lion Group has succeeded in surpassing Garuda Indonesia in the realm of domestic routes throughout 2020. The airline under the command of Rusdi Kirana recorded better performance, seen from market share and the number of passengers served.

As is known, the COVID-19 pandemic that entered the country on March 2, 2020 made the government close access to foreign nationals (WNA). Thus, the airline industry only serves domestic routes.

Cumulatively, the Lion Air Group, which consists of three airlines, namely Lion Air, Batik Air, and Wings Air, managed to transport up to 21.48 million passengers or have a market share of up to 60.6 percent.

However, if you look at it year on year (yoy), this achievement has fallen to 46.2 percent. Even so, the numbers weren't bad. Because, this achievement illustrates that Lion Group has succeeded in convincing the majority of air transport passengers during the pandemic to use their services.

Meanwhile, Garuda Indonesia and Citilink Indonesia only managed to transport 10.04 million passengers with a market share of 28.3 percent. Their market share actually decreased compared to the 2019 realization which was 34.5 percent.