The era of victory
The history of Indonesian aviation scribed the 1980s to 2000s with golden ink, as the glorious era of Garuda Indonesia. Imagine this; in the 1980s, Garuda Indonesia had flown across five continents.
On the African continent, Cairo, the capital city of Egypt, held the status of a technical landing city, and Garuda Indonesia opened a representative office there. On the European Continent, Garuda Indonesia explored Athens in Greece and Madrid in Spain. It also had a representative office in Stockholm, Sweden.
On the Asian Continent, Garuda Indonesia had explored all national capitals, including Saigon, Vietnam. On the American continent, Garuda Indonesia traversed across Hawaii and Los Angeles and had a representative office in Chicago.
Hence, in the past, the term “flag carrier” airlines emerged. Airlines such as Garuda Indonesia, Thai Airways and Japan Airlines carried their national flags across continents.
Alas, the bombardment of low-cost carrier (LCC) airlines such as AirAsia, Ryan Air and Lion Group caused fag-carrier airlines to fumble in their attempt to secure market share. Even well-founded airlines in the US, such as Pan Am, went out of business, due to the swarming feet of Pacific Southwest Airlines in the domestic market.
No wonder: Pacific Southwest Airlines had a feet of more than 500 Boeing 737-800 aircraft and could thus squeeze down its maintenance costs.
As we know, full-service airlines, on average, purchase different types of aircraft. Airlines from the 2000s and later, for example, often had a selection of airliners. Garuda Indonesia owned Boeing Classic 737 series 500/300/400/800/900/742/744, several types of Airbus, ATR turboprop planes and CRJ 1000 Bombardier.
While having different aircraft types might look fancy, it was actually a “slow suicide” as maintenance costs kept climbing.
Ergo, I was disheartened when many young politicians pragmatically demanded the airline disband when it was drowning in debt to vendors, owing up to IDR 190 trillion. Thankfully, that dire phase has passed, as agreements were made with 400 vendors and lessors.