Stranded in Hell: Jakarta

I would have liked to start my first blog back from Bali off saying how nice Bali was, but instead I had two days of hell stranded in Jakarta, waiting to get back to Tokyo via the incompetent and impolite Garuda Airlines. I guess it serves me right for flying on the cheap.

At first the air conditioning didn?t work and we sat for an hour baking on the plane before exciting for about two hours. Then we flew to Jakarta, where we waited until almost 6 am, due to "technical problems", which makes me wonder why they flew us from Denpasar to Jakarta if the jet had "technical problems." At this point they took us to a hotel, and fed us twice, before another series of mishaps.

While at the hotel they promised that we would leave at 9 pm that night, but before 1 pm, they had changed the sign saying that we would leave at 11 pm. After making us check out and get on buses for the airport, they told us on the bus, en route, that the plane would be delayed until 3 am. Then at 3 am they told us that we wouldn't leave until 6 am, because we were waiting for two more crewmembers. Then at 6 am, 11 Japanese passengers cancelled their flight, because they didn't want to fly on airplane that had had "technical difficulties" and had their luggage removed from the plane, but then changed their minds, so we didn't actually take off until 9 am, 37 hours after our scheduled flight time.

The worst part was their lack of communication with the passengers, and their lack of providing any sort of comfort, on the first day we should have been brought to the hotel earlier and on the second day we should have gotten a hotel, furthermore, all the false hope announcements (telling us a time and then postponing it) just frustrated everyone. I don't recommend flying Garuda, and I'll be making a formal complaint as well.

Comments

[Ivy]

I stumbled into your blog and I am very sorry to hear about your really, really bad experience with them. I am canadian with Indonesian heritage, I can relate to your bad experience. So far, I think Garuda is the only "better" choice than the other local, more unreliable airlines. We usually use other airlines like Cathay or Singapore Airlines that have higher (so much) higher standard when it comes to customer service and reliability.