From next March, Air France will extend its daily Paris-Singapore service onwards to Jakarta.
As one of the fastest-growing emerging markets in the world, Indonesia is also the largest economy in Southeast Asia and a member of the G-20. Since performing strongly during the Global Financial Crisis where its GDP grew by over 6 per cent, the country has become an attractive market for foreign investment as well as industry trade. For the Business Traveller Asia-Pacific special report on Indonesia entitled Island mentality, click here.
Another factor to consider is the apparent limitations of Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, which thereby forces many Indonesian travellers to fly to Singapore Changi Airport as a transit hub to their final destinations. By capitalising on this market, Air France will be able to feed off the additional passenger traffic for its own onward flights, and mitigate the slowdown seen in Europe.
Speaking to The Straits Times, Air France commercial director Matthieu Tetaud said: "As an airline, we would like to fly direct to all destinations but to do that, you need enough demand. When there isn't, you look for a hub. The good thing about Changi is that when you land an aircraft here, you have many options for connections.”
The planned Singapore-Jakarta leg comes after the French carrier reduced capacity for its Paris-Singapore service earlier this year by replacing the A380 with the single-deck B777, that offers about 200 less seats. Air France has instead chosen to introduce the superjumbo onto its Paris-Shanghai operations (see here).
In the same interview, Tetaud also admitted that the airline has “lost ground in the last few years to Asian and Middle Eastern carriers”, but reiterated that it was determined to continue to improve its offering, and become better than its competition. In its first step of attempting to do so, Air France recently unveiled new seats for its premium economy and economy class B777 cabin products (see here).
For more information, visit www.airfrance.fr
Clement Huang
