Airline a vital link
GARUDA Indonesia plays an important role in the country's tourism industry, increasingly helping to attract more visitors to the archipelago.
Garuda was the 17th-fastest growing airline in the world in 1991 and the same year was named the world's seventh most profitable airline by Airline Business magazine.
Garuda is the national flag-carrier of Indonesia, an airline which had humble beginnings, operating only one aircraft a little more than 40 years ago.
But growth has come rapidly.
The airline is now the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere, and has expanded widely into transport, tourism, accommodation, catering and related industries.
Garuda has made a committed investment into its own maintenance and facilities and is now almost self-sufficient in these areas.
The Garuda maintenance facility at Soekarno-Hatta International airport near Jakarta aims to provide services for other airlines.
Garuda employs more than 13,000 people and flies to more than 30 cities on five continents. Recently, the airline has focused its expansion in Southeast Asia, starting an additional service to Guangzhou via Surabaya.
Garuda plans to increase links with Hong Kong by introducing three additional weekly flights in November.
Last month, the airline's senior vice-president (commercial) S. H. Kussuyono, said the number of visitors to the country annually was predicted to triple to nine million by the year 2000.
