EMIRSYAH Satar resigned as president director of Garuda Indonesia on December 8 and has been succeeded by Arif Wibowo.
During his term of office starting March 2005, Emirsyah transformed an ailing Garuda into a profitable airline with a modern fleet of 160 airplanes and ushered the carrier into Skyteam.
Through his Quantum Leap 2011-2015 initiative, its fleet will grow further to 194 strong with an average age of under five years.
Garuda was also inducted into Skytrax’s league of five-star airlines a day before Arif took office, an accolade that is bestowed on only seven airlines worldwide.
Arif’s first year in office will be marked by the transfer of operation at Jakarta Sukarno Hatta International Airport to the newly built Terminal 3.
At an extraordinary general meeting last week, Arif and his team committed to focusing on the company’s core strategies of opening promising new routes, leveraging Skyteam membership and codesharing agreements to extract maximum benefits, reviewing the airline’s existing routes and increasing revenue, improving productivity throughout the organisation, and managing costs.
Arif joined Garuda as an aircraft maintenance engineer in 1990 and rose through the ranks to eventually being appointed as its vice president of sales and marketing before joining Citilink in May 2012.
