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THE Indonesian Citilink airline opens the Surabaya-Jeddah flight route with an Airbus A330-900 Neo, which has just been brought in by the company, and will be used for pilgrimage flights starting on January 26, 2020.
According to PT Citilink Indonesia’s Senior Charter and International Flight Manager Muhammad Agung Hartono in Surabaya said that direct routes to Jeddah using this type of aircraft were only available from Surabaya. Other routes to Jeddah actually already exist from Jakarta, Solo, Lampung, Semarang and Kertajati, but using the Airbus A320.
“With the A330-900 Neo wide body aircraft, Citilink seeks to accommodate the needs of pilgrims from East Java which are quite large. so it’s more time efficient. In addition, also to take a more market share than the share of the Umrah passenger market in East Java, which in 2019 averaged around 300,000 people,” he said.
Agung said we were targeting that with this new aircraft there would be an additional 100,000 pilgrims from East Java, and we plan to hold the Surabaya-Jeddah flight three times a week. The Airbus A330-900 Neo Citilink is a premium economy class (42 seats), comfort economy (24 seats) and economy (299 seats).
While East Java Deputy Governor Emil Elestianto Dardak said I also hope other airlines can continue to add international routes from East Java, particularly towards Australia.
“We have been sister provinces of Western Australia for 3 decades. I hope that Garuda Indonesia Group can open a direct route to Perth to support our tourism,” he said. [antaranews/photo special]
