Curing Garuda's loss-making service

When Garuda used to fly to Europe, it was always my airline of choice for London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt, as I greatly prefer Asian airlines over European ones (Garuda sees continuing trend in rising losses, The Jakarta Post, July 5).

It was convenient and direct, business class was reasonably priced, food and service was excellent and punctuality was good, however despite always having to take my chances on a waiting list for several months until the day of departure, flights were invariably half empty.

This made no sense, but as no airline can survive flying half empty for long, Garuda consequently stopped flying these "loss- making" routes in 2003. So how do airlines like Singapore Air continue to fly these routes and report record profits, despite current oil prices?

The reason for the long wait lists and half empty planes was Garuda's policy of treating provisional bookings as confirmed. People would therefore book five or six flights and then either not travel at all, or only select and pay for the most convenient one at the last moment, leaving four or five empty seats on other flights for which Garuda had refused genuine bookings.

Customers on the wait list had, in the meantime, given up and booked with alternative airlines, hence the many empty seats. This practice loses a great many potential repeat customers and is commercial suicide.

The solution to this is not to cut back on core business (taking people to where they want to go) as Garuda has done, but to restore all flights to Europe, place a 3-day payment time limit on provisional bookings and give priority to customers wanting to book and pay up front. By adopting these simple measures Garuda can get back to profitable flying and fill a huge gap in the market for direct non-European flights from Jakarta to Europe.

DAVID J C COOK, Jakarta