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It seems like Garuda Indonesia will discontinue its route between London Heathrow and Jakarta in the coming winter schedule, which starts 28 October. Reservations for the route have been closed for a few weeks already. A senior manager of the Skyteam airline told FlightGlobal that the aircraft normally used for the London run will be assigned to Jakarta – Tokyo and Bali – Melbourne. Garuda could not clarify to InsideFlyer whether the route will return in the summer. Slots for Heathrow flights are very valuable, but if left unused, the airline forfeits their ownership.
Most likely, passengers already booked on flights to Jakarta and beyond from October onwards will be placed on the Amsterdam – Jakarta flight after a feeder on KLM. Currently, this flight is operated 6 times a week. Starting 28 October, the technical stop in Singapore on the return is discontinued, making both legs non-stop. The departure times are rescheduled as well which means UK passengers will have to take an early morning flight to Amsterdam to catch the Jakarta flight.
Garuda also uses a Boeing 777-300ER from Amsterdam, however in a two-class configuration. This means there is no First Class and fewer Business Class seats. In Economy Class, there is still is still a (relatively) spacious 3-3-3 lay-out.
Bunch of c**ts 🙁
How Garuda Indonesia an get away with doing this I don’t know but this has totally ruined our honeymoon and Christmas plans. Not only is our both our outbound and return flights moved to 1 day later, but having to get to and from another country is completely out of order.
Currently Garuda has sent no email explanation or apology we simply got an automated flight change email.
They have our money but we want to now book different flights we can’t possibly be expected to do a long haul flight including Amsterdam and the delay means we can no longer stop over for 1 night in Jakarta as planned and that means loosing the hotel we have which is non refundable.
We’ve tried all day yesterday to contact Garuda they are not picking up the phone in the UK office, and expect customers to call an expensive international number in Indonesia to try and sort it out. We tried that and we on hold for 20 minutes before being cut off, which cost a fortune to call from the UK. We’ve sent two emails requesting an explanation and a refund but they have not yet come back to us. The have £1600 of our money which we need in order to book different flights. My finace is in tears and this has totally ruined our honeymoon plans, as the route back is also massively effected and will mean we will be stuck at Jakarta airport for 11 hours waiting for the delayed flight, and then will have to go to Amsterdam and find a way back to the UK.
Totally unprofessional to make such a decision when customers already have bookings flying from London Heathrow and to do it over the Christmas period is completely out of order , I can’t see these changes being acceptable for many passengers , and the fact they give no option anywhere to request a refund and not accept the changes, so we can get on and book new flights, is just crazy.
Shame on you Garuda, all those great reviews online mean nothing if you can treat your customers which such disgusting behavior – we want our money back!
We had the same issue, the London offices wouldn’t answer and It took three calls to their jakarta office to get a reply. We have demanded a refund for our April flights and are waiting to receive it. Terrible customer service, like you we simply received an email about flight change, very disappointed and hoping we get our refund soon. Will now have to shell out for new flights which are now so expensive !
Hi Matt,
Really sorry to hear about your honeymoon plans being impacted! If you’re still struggling to get anywhere with Garuda, it might be worth asking your credit card company (assuming you paid with a credit card) if it’s possible for them to instigate a chargeback.
Hope Garuda get their act together for you!
Frankly if you book with third tier airlines out of price don’t be surprised when stuff like this happens. It was always an underused Route, they begged for it for ages and then did nothing to market it. Airlines like Garuda are notoriously temperamental and unreliable. And you can forget customer service, they don’t know what that is and never have. Do more research in future. You could have flown KLM from Amsterdam and avoided all this.
I tend to disagree with you Jon. The service once in the air is outstanding, I’ve flown with them frequently between Melbourne and London via Jakarta and via Denpasar/Singapore/Amsterdam and I couldn’t fault it at all, probably the best cabin service I’ve ever experienced. I wouldn’t grade them as third tier though, they have their issues like any other airline and they’ve really swung the airline around in recent years.
Where they do get it wrong is with their customer service on the ground. They really need to get their act together there, I’ve experienced it several times and like others posting here their customer service is absolutely woeful. Trying to get a response from them by way of email or telephone is short of impossible and infuriating.
I was delayed 2 days in Jakarta once en-route to London due to a late arrival of an inbound aircraft into Melbourne, I needed a letter from them explaining why the aircraft was delayed for a travel insurance pay out. Never received it despite contacting them numerous times. In the end ( like many others before me I suspect ) I gave up and swallowed the additional costs incurred.
Where I do agree with you Jon is “notoriously temperamental”, I’ve had flight changes several hours out from heading to the airport! They are on the whole reliable with take off and only rarely have I had delays. But tyhe random flight changes, even at the last minute have p******* me right off.
Where I am astonished is the retraction of the CGK-LHR-CGK service. It’s always been stuffed to the rafters when I’ve flown, with the exception of First – although even there I’ve seen it full. Both Business and Economy cabins there’s barely a seat left, so surprised by them pulling it.
I had the same problem – my flights were booked and paid for in February and the termination of the London flights to Jakarta leaves my whole travel plans up in the air.
I did finally manage to get through to the London office after trying for two days but was told they could not process a refund – that had to be done by the Jakarta office since I booked online. The email address they gave me was: [email protected] and they said to be sure to quote the booking reference number
Not sure how long this will take but thought this information might be useful to others who can’t get through on the London number.
Thanks for sharing Graham!
Had return tickets booked for several months for Melbourne -Jakarta – London over the Xmas period. To simply receive an automated change of schedule email stating your flights are now destined for a different country is simply appalling customer service.
We are now forced in to cancelling these flights (if we can get a Garuda CS representative to respond) and paying substantially more as flights are now considerably more expensive.
Perhaps a class action for some compensation on this atrocious behaviour by Garuda is in order.
Have flown GA LHR ago Bali and back and in the air, they are a great airline
I think the comments above re ‘third tier airline’ are a little mean – a so called 5 star airline, Singapore Airlines, did this couple of years ago and changed the daily Manchester to Singapore flight to fewer flights a week which meant I had to return home via Amsterdam. It was actually no big deal, despite it adding more connections
First world problems, eh?
We cancelled the flight due to change and rebooked with Emirates and £100 each more so worth doing for a good airline. Promised refund in 2 weeks and still waiting nearly 4 weeks on just got mail this morning apologising for delay and will up date as soon as they can. Who knows when so guess will go to credit card company to start process of getting money back next week