Flying with Garuda Indonesia

On May 15 to May 18, 2003, my husband, my 5-year-old son and I went to Yogyakarta for the long weekend. We booked a return flight from Jakarta to Yogyakarta with Garuda Indonesia. I made a direct reservation with "Garuda 24 hours" at (021) 23519999 under booking code: QD6CN4.

For our son's comfort, we specifically requested seats at the front of a section. Garuda reserved our seats in row 10 D/E/F for flight GA 2062 on May 15 from Jakarta to Yogyakarta.

The day before we left, we checked in at the Garuda office in Hotel Indonesia and our boarding passes were issued for the above seat numbers. On May 15, we reported to the check-in counter at Soekarno-Hatta airport while we checked in our baggage. Up until then, everything was fine and nobody from Garuda said anything about our seats.

Once we boarded the airplane we found that our seats were next to the emergency exit, and that this is prohibited for children. For everybody's safety, the cabin attendant moved us to row 12 D/E/F. We didn't argue because we agreed that passenger safety was important. We also noticed that there was a child with two adults in row 10 A/B/C who had to be moved to other seats for the same reason.

We kept wondering why three employees of Garuda confirmed our seats (at reservations, the city check-in and at the check-in counter) but none of them knew that children are not allowed to be seated next to the emergency exit in an airplane? Or maybe they knew but just didn't care about the safety of passengers and ignored the safety procedures?

Our problems with Garuda were not over yet. We were supposed to leave for Jakarta in the afternoon of May 18 on Flight GA 2092 departing Yogyakarta at 3:50 p.m and arriving in Jakarta at 4:50 p.m.. We chose this departure time because we expected the flight to be delayed and would arrive in Jakarta around 6 p.m. and we did not want our son to be too tired for his class the following day.

On the afternoon of May 16, I called (021) 23519999 from Yogyakarta and found out that our reservation for GA 2092 was deliberately canceled by Garuda Reservation Control without our approval and without even informing us. The staff explained that GA 2092 was over-booked and we already had confirmed seating on flight GA 2112. Whatever the reason, we didn't understand why Garuda made no effort to call us and let us know about the situation!

As expected the departure of flight GA 2112 was delayed for about an hour and we landed in Jakarta around 9 p.m. By then, our son was exhausted and my husband and I were very upset with Garuda's service.

SOERJANDARI A., Jakarta