LCC in Indonesia

[Scarlett]

As this thread is no longer open for replies: Domestic in Indonesia with Citilink/Air Asia Indonesia
I thought I’d give an update on travelling with Indonesian LCC Citilink (code QG).

Citilink is the LCC arm of (almost bankrupt) national carrier Garuda. Think JQ to QF…
In terms of local airlines Garuda is generally the ‘safest’ to take, however they’ve cut back their flying significantly to try to rescue their dire financial situation. Much of that capacity has been replaced by Citilink and their all Y A320 fleet. Maybe foolishly, I like to think that some of the better practices and structures flowed down from GA to QG when they were set up, so I personally consider QG a much better choice than Lion, Sriwijaya Air and Wings and light years ahead of the clown show that is Air Asia. Batik is an interesting one as it’s the full service offshoot of LCC Lion? I’ve flown them a couple of times due to cheap business class fares and cheap upgrades, but suspect that under the skin they probably suffer similar organisational immaturity as their parent.

Flew a 1:45hr sector a couple of days ago and have the return tomorrow. The ‘green seats’ are the first five rows and currently mean an almost eurobuisness style product with an unallocated centre seat in each block of three. There is an extra cost for choosing these seats. The pick of them is row 1 with plenty of extra legroom.



They make a rather pointless claim:


Flight was on time. It was a morning flight so that is more likely - as the day goes on delays tend to compound. Lion Air and their Wings subsidiary tend to have more problems with delayed and cancelled flights I believe.

Views inbound from 1F:


Last point is much like @theblank, I travel with golf clubs. There would be an approx $20 charge for each leg carrying sports equipment, however for those likely to take more than two flights with QG, you can join their Citisport programme, pay $45 upfront and then get 20KG of your chosen sport equipment for free each flight.

More to come tomorrow after the return journey, unless it is pointlessly uninteresting.

 

[Scarlett]

A Citilink update. No more blocked centre seat in the Green seats up front section.
“Pack ‘em in” is the ongoing motto.

 

[Scarlett]

Long and disappointing experience yesterday:
(caution this post has raged way out of control and is approaching chapter of War and Peace length)

Was due to fly QG BDO-BPN-BDJ, which is Bandung-Balikpapan-Banjarmasin and for those not familiar with Indonesia, looks like this:


(Map generated on gcmap.com)

Enroute to the airport I get the dreaded ‘your flight has been rescheduled’ (weasel words for a delay). With a 1:15 connection time and advice of a two hour delay, I started looking at flight radar and Google flights for options. Wasn’t pretty as the BDO-BPN departure is the last QG flight for the day from BDO. Based on where the aircraft was when I checked, it was going to be well over the advertised two hours delay.

Get to the airport, show security guy the etkt to be let into the terminal, show vaccination status (Indonesia is still COVID paranoid) and go to the check in counter to see what can be done. Then get escorted (nicely, as in, QG employee genuinely being helpful - asked to take my bag and all) back outside to the service desk. As an LCC they understand I’ll mis-connect, but only option offered is come back same time tomorrow. I wanted to be in BDJ the day I was flying so didn’t want that solution.

It was now just past 1200 for an original 1335 flight. I should also note there are no direct flight options at the moment, although ‘Super Air Jet’ (yes a real airline…) has planned to start the route, sometime.

My research had shown a 1645 QG flight from Jakarta, CGK-BDJ and the agent was happy enough to put me on that if I wanted it. Now CGK is at best a three hour trip away, think CBR to SYD kind of thing, but if the traffic was bad it could be five hours.
Q. How can you get me to Jakarta, I ask?
A. You’re on your own if you want to do it.

Q. Can I get a voucher for a taxi or shuttle bus?
A. No.

Q. I’ve paid for Green seat upfront, can you keep me in row 1 (that and exit row are the only decent legroom).
A. (checks computer). Yes Pak.

Q. What if I don’t get to the airport in time? There are a Lion Air and a Batik Air flight on the same route after the QG one - would you put me on one of those?
A. We don’t know. You’d have to ask the service desk at Jakarta.

At this point I open the Bluebird taxi app, put in a dummy booking for BDO to CGK and it tells me the cost will be about IDR900,000 which is very close to AUD90. Note that this is for an at best three hour, 150Km journey… you’d never consider that in Australia, for one the journey cost would be well more than the flight cost, but also you’d probably be expected to pay for the cab to get back to the starting city.

I’m rolling the dice! I ask the agent to email me the new flight and head for the door. A couple of Bluebird drivers are in the usual Indonesian waiting pose near their cabs: squatting and smoking.
(sort of like this)


I tell them my flight is too delayed and ask them if they’ll take me to Cengkareng (CGK airport). Before they even had a chance to utter ‘crazy bule’ to one another, one guy is up and opening his boot for my luggage.

Just over three relatively uncomfortable hours later (we had to stop for the driver to fuel up and load up his toll-road card) I’m at CGK with 40 minutes to spare before check in closes.

Check in, clear security and finally get something to drink and some lunch. I check FR24 and my inbound aircraft is in an orbit north of Jakarta - dammit. It finally pulls up to the gate at about our departure time. To solve the problem of the flight appearing late, all of the flight information is removed from the gate display screens. Wait some more. Boarding is 40 minutes late. Once loaded, Captain Speaking comes on and tells us there’s a 30 minute hold due to airport congestion. Eventually we taxi and depart.

Hello Jakarta:

(a rare, non-smoggy view of Jakarta, due to the afternoons tropical downpour)

Interestingly I was given a meal on the flight which I hadn’t pre booked, or ordered, so that was nice. Finally get to my hotel after 2100.

Now I have the fun of trying to get some sort of refund out of the QG system, both for only taking one flight rather than two, and also for the excess baggage fee I’d paid because the planned BPN-BDJ leg was on an ATR72 and that only comes with a 10Kg baggage allowance. Hopefully that should cover the cost of the taxi.

I’m a glutton for punishment: QG BDJ-SUB-PNK booked for tomorrow. I intend to have a foot in both the northern and southern hemispheres tomorrow evening when visiting the Khatulistiwa (equator) park, on the northern edge of Pontianak city.

Going places is fun. Mostly.

 

[Scarlett]

Ref the above post, my Thurs QG flights resulted in:
- first flight BDJ-SUB being about 20 minutes late.
- second flight SUB-PNK being about 40 minutes late.

It is pretty common for most of the LCCs in Indonesia to have delays to build up throughout the day. This is most likely due to each turnaround being scheduled for 30 minutes to achieve high airframe utilisation, but in reality it takes a little longer than that, like 40-50 minutes, and many airports create additional delays with things like necessitating back tracking along the runway. (no separate full length taxi way)

 

[Scarlett]

Oh, and from my longer post above, here’s one of Citilinks LCC competitors: Super Air Jet.

I think they get around on FR24 with IATA code IU for their flight numbers.