Garuda Indonesia Projects Passenger Traffic For The Christmas And New Year Period To Grow 27 Percent

Garuda Indonesia aircraft. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

JAKARTA - The national airline Garuda Indonesia projects that passenger traffic will grow positively up to 27 percent during the Christmas and New Year period in December 2021. This projection increases when compared to the same period in November 2021.

President Director of Garuda Indonesia, Irfan Setiaputra, said the projected increase in passenger traffic is in line with the trend of people taking advantage of the end of the year to travel with family, in line with the relaxation of community mobility policies during the Christmas and New Year period.

Irfan said the projected positive growth of passenger traffic at the end of this year would certainly be a source of optimism for Garuda Indonesia amid the impact of the decline in passenger traffic during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a business entity that also relies on the mobility of passengers and goods as its main income line, Irfan continued, this projection is of course a positive signal in itself for efforts to accelerate the recovery of Garuda's performance in the future.

"The projected increase in passenger traffic at the end of this year is an important momentum for Garuda to continue to accelerate the recovery of the aviation business ecosystem, which together are aligned with the recovery of the tourism sector and regional economy", he said in a written statement, Tuesday, December 28.

Irfan said this is in line with Garuda's commitment as a national flag carrier to continue to play an active role as a unified national strategic industrial ecosystem, to ensure that Garuda's performance improvement measures run continuously with efforts to restore the national tourism sector and regional economy.

Furthermore, Irfan said that although the projected passenger growth has not shown significant growth when compared to the increase in passenger movement at the end of the year in the period before the pandemic.

"We see this positive trend as an important basis for reflecting on the community's readiness to continue to adapt in traveling in this new normal era by ensuring the consistency of the implementation of health protocols runs optimally", he explained.

Irfan said this was also in line with the results of an internal survey conducted last October where 68 percent of passengers stated that they would start traveling in the next 3 months, namely in November, December, and January.

"Of course, we will continue to align the increase in passenger traffic with various preventive measures to ensure consistency in the implementation of health protocols running optimally in all operational lines, in addition to ensuring that aspects of safety, service, and security of flight operations run optimally with the support of relevant stakeholders", he said.

Irfan said, Garuda also ensures that the consistency of the timeliness of flights is maintained, where the average level of timeliness of flights in the Naru period to date has touched the range of 85 percent.

Irfan said that amid positive signals of the projected increase in passenger traffic at the end of this year's momentum, Garuda believes that the consistency of the implementation of the procedures and procedures for handling the pandemic is a shared priority that must always be put forward.

"Therefore, we continue to optimize the readiness of the infrastructure for efforts to enforce the process with relevant stakeholders, to ensure that the commitment to providing safe and comfortable flight services for the entire community is always maintained", he said.