Garuda flight cancellations

Garuda flight cancellations

Garuda's decision to suspend flights to Frankfurt and
Amsterdam as of Jan. 22, 2003, onwards is not only
shortsighted in the extreme but also fails to make any business
or political sense.

At a time when other international carriers have already
reduced their flights to Indonesia, it would have made perfect
business sense for the national carrier to maintain its scheduled
European flights and to take advantage of the reduced seating
capacity.

While the hotel industry has initiated a number of measures to
shore up the sorely affected Bali tourist business, government
statements and declarations of support ring increasingly hollow
and meaningless.

Instead of helping to restore both Indonesia's and Bali's
image as a safe tourist destination, the decision by the
country's national carrier to cancel strategically important
flights, unfortunately, conveys the opposite message.

Garuda's decision is all the more surprising in view of the
fact that except for business-class seats, its January flights to
Europe are fully booked. On the other hand, how on earth are
visitors with a Garuda round-trip ticket expected to get back
home from their year-end Indonesian holiday?

I have a number of European visitors arriving on Garuda round-
trip tickets in December and I'm still trying
to figure out how to get them home again.

JOE L. SPARTZ, Jakarta