Garuda Indonesia Collaborates With Air Astana For The Expansion Of The Aviation Network To Kazakhstan.

JAKARTA - The national airline Garuda Indonesia has established commercial cooperation with Air Astana, which is an airline from Kazakhstan. Through this commercial cooperation, Garuda Indonesia expanded its flight network to and from Kazakhstan.

The two airlines introduced online flight services that can connect service users of the two airlines to fly between countries via the Bali Seoul Almaty (Kazakhstan) flight route which will start operating on May 15, 2023.

President Director of Garuda Indonesia, Irfan Setiaputra, revealed that the launch of the online flight service connecting Indonesia and Kazakhstan was one of Garuda Indonesia's supports in optimizing bilateral relations between Indonesia and Kazakhstan, known as the country with the largest economic posture in Central Asia.

This is also in line with the trend of growth in bilateral trading volume which shows a significant increase of more than 83% during 2022.

"We hope that the presence of online flight services to and from Kazakhstan can strengthen the outlook for Indonesian tourism by presenting an increasingly seamless choice of flight services to Indonesia for foreign tourists from Central Asia, especially to Bali, which is one of the epicenters of national tourism," said Irfan in a release received by VOI.

"This is certainly an opportunity for the contribution of foreign tourists visiting from Kazakhstan who are currently able to fly to Indonesia with an on-arrival visa procedure," explained Irfan.

This online flight service via the Bali Seoul Amalty route is the flight service with the most competitive connecting flight options where the transit time between flights can be carried out in about 2 hours.

The transit procedure is also increasingly seamless because service users do not need to provide transit visas at Incheon Airport, South Korea and can immediately continue connecting flights through a transit procedure from Terminal 2 to Terminal 1.

Irfan continued that the initiative to expand the flight network to and from Kazakhstan via this online route is also expected to bring added value to services for Garuda Indonesia passengers both in terms of comfort and convenience towards Kazakhstan.

Service users from Kazakhstan who will head to Bali will later be served with Air Astana (KC909) which will depart from Almaty international airport at 01.10 LT and are scheduled to arrive at Incheon international airport, Korea at 09.45 LT to continue their journey back with Garuda Indonesia (GA871) which will depart from Incheon international airport at 11.25 LT and will arrive at Ngurah Rai international airport at 17.20 WITA.

Meanwhile, service users from Indonesia who will go to Khazakhstan will be served from Bali who will be served with GA870 which will depart from Ngurah Rai international airport at 01.05 WITA and will arrive at Incheon international airport at 09.15 LT to continue the journey by Air Astana (GA 910) at 11.25 LT and will arrive at Almaty's international airport at 15.15 LT.

"Of course, in the future, we will continue to optimize cooperation with various airline partners, not only to provide various added values, especially for Garuda Indonesia service users but also to provide flight connectivity to lead to various national leading destinations for foreign tourists," concluded Irfan.