Garuda Indonesia is to upgrade its Jakarta-London route to a nonstop service from next month.

Currently the carrier’s flights to Heathrow route via Singapore, but from October 31 the nonstop service will depart Jakarta at 1205, landing into London at 2000.

The Heathrow-Jakarta leg – already a nonstop service – departs London at 2155, arriving into Jakarta at 1855.

The route will remain thrice weekly – earlier this week we reported that the carrier was dropping the current Sunday service, but Garuda has now confirmed this frequency will be rescheduled to Thursday, resulting in a Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday service.

The route will also continue to be operated by a three-class B777-300ER aircraft (economy, business and first class).

Garuda says that it has amended flight timings “to boost connections from the UK to Australia (Melbourne, Sydney and Perth), the Far East (Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul) and China (Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou and Shanghai)”.

Commenting on the news Boydike Kussudiarso, General Manager UK & Ireland said:

“Operating non-stop flights from Jakarta to London has been a significant goal of ours for many years, even more so since the new Terminal 3 at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport – which opened just last year – became our home this May.

“We wanted to introduce the non-stop service to reflect Jakarta’s growing profile as a hub for international and domestic travel, allowing UK travellers and our SkyTeam Frequent Travellers better connections to more destinations.”

garuda-indonesia.com