Alhamdulillah safely landed at CGK, after 13 hours of direct flight from AMS.

Suprisingly, it wasn’t bad, as I managed to watch 2 movies and slept for 7 hours in between 😅

For aviation geek only: this is the same type of airplane we took when we flew to AMS two weeks ago. The Boeing 777-300ER (stands for Extended Range) is capable to fly up to 15,000 km range. Theoretically it is able to fly direct from CGK to London Heathrow (LHR) which is 14,500 km away.

So why Garuda doesn’t offer this route? Or in our case, why we had to transit in Changi Singapore 2 weeks ago?

The answer of this question is not only because of commercial reason (e.g. to take more passengers from Singapore), but mostly due to technical reason: our CGK airport doesn’t have long enough runway for a full-tank Boeing 777-300ER to fly. Hence we will never have direct flight from CGK to AMS, let alone LHR!

Will we have it someday? I doubt it as it may not be the priority. Priority should be given to add more runways so less queue for airborne flights! 😅