A number of Star Alliance member carriers are set to enhance their networks to Indonesia in 2015 in order to tap into the growth of travel demands from the country’s rising middle class and affluent consumers.
Turkish Airlines Inc. president and CEO Temel Kotil said that the carrier would replace its current daily Jakarta–Istanbul flight via Singapore with a direct connection between the two countries mid next year.
“Indonesia has become a super power country and it is also a Muslim country like Turkey. The [air travel] demand from Indonesia to Turkey is always increasing and we want to increase our daily flight into a twice daily flight in the future,” Temel told The Jakarta Post recently on the sidelines of the Star Alliance chief executive board meeting in New Delhi, India.
He also said that the carrier was currently looking into Denpasar, Bali, as a point it would fly to in the near future due to the healthy traffic between Indonesia and Turkey.
“Relations between Indonesia and Turkey are fantastic. We have just had a meeting in Bali about our plan to enter the [Bali] market. But we have not decided the time when we can begin the flight services at the moment,” he added.
Besides Turkish Airlines, Star Alliance members who wish to upgrade their networks to the country included EVA Air and Air India.
“Southeast Asia is a quite important market for us and we are looking into increasing our capacity to three destinations in Indonesia. We might increase our flights to daily flight from [the currently] five flights a week from Denpasar [to Taipei],” EVA Air deputy junior vice president for the corporate planning division Jeffrey Chen told the Post.
Currently EVA Air flies daily between Jakarta and Taipei and five times and three times weekly from Denpasar and Surabaya, East Java, respectively.
Meanwhile, Air India chairman and managing director Rohit Nandan said that the airline at this point has yet to decide to make a direct link between Jakarta and New Delhi amid potentials in the Indonesian market.
“We have been looking at the Indonesian market but so far we have been connecting India and Indonesia via Singapore. We will see whether there is a possibility to create a code-share partnership with one of your local carriers like Lion Air or Garuda Indonesia,” Rohit said.
The Star Alliance network was established in 1997 as the first global airline alliance to offer worldwide reach, recognition and seamless service to international travelers. With 27 members such as Lufthansa, United, Singapore Airlines, ANA, and Air China, the alliance network currently offers more than 18,500 daily flights to 1,321 destinations in 193 countries.
“We will continue to grow our global network by optimizing connectivity in order to extract more value from the network, further improving customer experience by raising the consistency of our travel experience across the entire network and, last but not least, further incorporating new front- and back-end technology to support our businesses,” said Calin Rovinescu, president and CEO of Air Canada who is also the chairman of the Star Alliance Chief Executive Board. (Nurfika Osman)
