20th member sets alliance on course for growth in Asia Pacific region in March 2014.
SINGAPORE – SkyTeam, the global airline alliance, will welcome Garuda Indonesia as its 20th member on March 5, 2014. The national airline of Indonesia, Garuda will become SkyTeam’s second member from Southeast Asia.
Garuda’s membership of SkyTeam will facilitate travel to Indonesia – Southeast Asia’s largest economy – for customers around the world. Garuda operates nonstop flights from Jakarta, the nation’s capital and financial centre, to seven SkyTeam hubs: Seoul, Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei and Amsterdam.
“SkyTeam brings more than 1,020 global destinations to Garuda customers. In addition to an extensive network, dedicated services such as SkyPriority and access to over 530 lounges will be amongst the benefits that Garuda customers will gain from being part of the SkyTeam alliance,” said Michael Wisbrun, SkyTeam’s managing director. “Garuda is on target to meet all the membership criteria required by SkyTeam, including implementing a new IT platform and customer-focused initiatives. We look forward to welcoming the airline on 5 March next year.”
Garuda Indonesia’s President & CEO, Emirsyah Satar, expressed his gratitude to SkyTeam and all of the member airlines for all the support given to the airline thus far. Joining SkyTeam is a long-term development strategy for Garuda Indonesia, as planned in the airline’s strategic expansion program “Quantum Leap 2011 – 2015”, and Garuda has been upgrading its service and actively forging cooperation with SkyTeam member airlines with this objective in mind.
“Joining SkyTeam marks another significant milestone in the company’s development, as we are now entering the stage of being a global player. This is part of our strategy to extend our network worldwide while at the same time improving our service by facilitating a seamless and more convenient travel experience for our customers,” said Satar.
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