Garuda takes over Merpati
flight services in NTT
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Business | Tue, March 04 2014, 12:32 PM

Garuda Indonesia will soon take over a number of flight services in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) from financially troubled carrier PT Merpati Nusantara Airlines.

“The takeover will be effective at the end of March,” said Micky Irfandi, Kupang district manager for Garuda Indonesia, on Tuesday as quoted by Antara news agency.

Merpati stopped operations on Feb. 1 because it was unable to find a solution to its mounting debts, which had reached Rp 6.7 trillion (US$565 million).

The government finally grounded Merpati on Feb. 10 to resolve its financial troubles and is not permitted to fly until it does so.

The flight services to be taken over by Garuda will be the Kupang-Ende-Labuan Bajo-Denpasar and Kupang-Tambolaka-Denpasar routes.

According to Micky, the takeover will be conducted to fill the two routes abandoned by Merpati.

As of March, 17, Garuda Indonesia would start serving the Kupang–Mataram–Surabaya route to enable passengers from Kupang to fly directly to Mataram without a stopover in Denpasar, he said.

“It is part of Garuda’s commitments to expand air transportation access for inter-island services,” he added.(yln)

Sumber: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/03/04/garuda-takes-over-merpati-flight-services-ntt.html