AirAsia expansion 'not a threat' to Garuda

Garuda Indonesia sees no threat in the expansion of AirAsia Indonesia in its base at Jakarta Soekarno Hatta International Airport (Business Times, 22-Mar-2011). CEO Emirsyah Satar stated that there are clear distinctions between the two, with AirAsia Indonesia mainly feeding into Kuala Lumpur. AirAsia Bhd recently stated that Garuda would be focussing more on growing its international markets out of Indonesia, rather than grow domestically.

Garuda: "We feel that the market is segmented, yes we know that growth is coming more from the budget travellers. Being a full service carrier, we do not go into the market. We have our low-cost version, Citilink, which is a subsidiary of Garuda, but so far we have no intention of flying it to Kuala Lumpur. No, we believe that it's either you're an LCC or a full service, I haven't seen any hybrid airlines which are very successful ... they might survive, but not very successful" Source: Business Times, 22-Mar-2011.