...Going through some CD's few days back and found one by this name by Melbourne singer Joanne.
The cover read "There's no stopping us" Dear Les.David and Michelle, You are invited to a cocktail party to help celebrate Garuda Idonesia's 53rd Birthday and 10 Years of service into Adelaide. Featuring live performance by Joanne.....Semaphore Palais Friday 25 January 2002.
How times change! What went wrong? In 1992 Garuda Indonesia commenced its services into Adelaide with 3 flights each week using Airbus A-300, initially aircraft from "Air Mexico - complete with Mexican Flight-Deck Crew whose in-flight announcements were hilarious! There had been a delay in delivery of three A-300's from Ansett Leasing.
Why could 3 services be sustainable back then and now Adelaide off-line? Back then, fares (without today's crazy taxes) were around - if not more - than what people are paying now.
I seriously believe that the "Bali-Lovers" became their own worst enemy, with the final "crunch" coming with the advent of Air Paradise into the Australian Market. With them began a "Fare-War" driving prices down to levels which were unsustainable in the long-term.
I constantly warned Air Paradise Management that if they maintained the downward push in fare prices just to get "bums on seats" (naturally Garuda had to follow to be "competitive"), nobody would be the ultimate winner. With margins so low (and possibly Pak Kadek doing a little "skimming off the top")it needed not much more than a "hic-up" to push Air Paradise over the edge. This, of course came in the form of Bomb 2 which saw Air Paradise, having no emergency reserve funds, fold in a matter of weeks, with the disastrous consequences which have affected so many - Passengers, Agents and Wholesalers who collectively lost millions of dollars through the collapse.
Adelaide people abandoned Garuda in droves to grab the "magical" Air Paradise fares and, of course, the two direct flights between Adelaide and Bali. My Garuda sales at Golden Bali & Global Travel dropped dramatically over this period and as Garuda's #1 Australian Agent, loss of revenue from my office alone seriously impacted the viability of Garuda's Adelaide Services and their Adelaide Office.
By the time Air Paradise collapsed, it was simply too late. Passengers weren't flying to Bali from anywhere in Australia, whilst other markets, particularly inter-Asia were booming and needed extra aircraft capacity. Garuda Management in Jakarta simply made a commercial decision at that time when they scaled-down their Australian operations.
If you scan through the posts here on BTF,just look at the number looking for "special deals" to get them to Bali. Many of you have been visiting Bali for a very long time; please cast your minds back to what you were paying for the Air Fare of your Bali Holiday 15 years ago. Disregard the Surcharges and Taxes from today's fares and you will see that they are, in most cases, lower than you were paying then.
Airlines are a business! Many of you have your own businesses. How long would you continue to operate YOUR business, even if you had as much work as you could handle, if at the end of the day the business did not return a profit to you?
Please think about this if you really want to see Airlines provide the numbers of flights which are really needed to service the now-growing Australian market. Why would Garuda want to re-open offices in Adelaide and Brisbane if, by operating almost-full flights, there is no profitibality in them?