Cathay to serve Surabaya

Cathay to serve Surabaya

JAKARTA (JP): The Hong Kong-based air carrier Cathay Pacific will start a non-stop service linking Hong Kong and Surabaya of East Java in June.

The airline's managing director, Rod Eddington, said here yesterday that Cathay Pacific will initially serve the route twice weekly on June 2 with Lockheed L1011 TriStar.

"Surabaya is Cathay Pacific's third gateway in Indonesia after Jakarta and Denpasar, Bali. The Surabaya service is popular with business and leisure travelers," he said, adding that for the time being, services between Surabaya and Hong Kong will fly via Singapore.

Indonesia and Hong Kong amended their air agreement last year, under which Cathay Pacific is licensed to serve three cities in Indonesia.

"Actually we can start serving Surabaya very soon, but we will start in June as we want everything to be well-prepared," he said.

"We will consider serving many other gateways in Indonesia later. We already serve five main cities in Japan, which is much smaller in size than Indonesia," he said.

The company's country manager for Indonesia, Gregory Hughes, said that the new service will be more convenient for passengers and for cargo companies in Surabaya that export to Hong Kong.

Cathay Pacific, which has already been serving Indonesia for about 35 years, operates 10 weekly nonstop flights from Jakarta in addition to four weekly services from Denpasar.(icn)