Flying with Garuda Indonesia
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