Thai Airways to add Indonesian flights

JAKARTA (JP): Thai Airways International will start a new service route this year linking Bangkok, Jakarta, and Sydney, the company announced yesterday.

The airline's general manager for Indonesia, Sarieng Maneelert, said the new route would start Oct. 26 and would be served by two Airbus A300-600s.

"Each of the flights, TG985 and TG986, will fly the route four times a week," Maneelert said.

TG985 will fly Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, and TG986 on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.

Both planes had 247 seats, 201 of which would be economy class, he said.

The new routes are in addition to the airlines 12 weekly flights linking Jakarta and Bangkok, Thailand and three flights linking Surabaya, East Java and Bangkok via Denpasar, Bali.

Maneelert said he was optimistic Thai airlines' prospects in Indonesia this year were good, especially with Southeast Asian Games in Jakarta in October.

He said the airline expected its load factor on the Indonesia route to rise to 75 percent this year from 70 percent last year.

Three carriers, Garuda Indonesia, Qantas, and Ansett International, currently link Jakarta and Sydney, Australia.

Thai Airways joined the Star Alliance last May along with Lufthansa, United Airlines, Air Canada, Scandinavian Airlines Systems, and Brazil's Varig Airlines.

The alliance works on common brand marketing and advertising and to intensify the coordination of routes and shared-code flights in which passengers can be passed on from one airline to the other.

Maneelert said the five airlines in the alliance were working to create unified standards.

He said three other airlines from Japan, South America, and Africa might join the alliance. He refused to name the airlines. (das)