JAKARTA, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia's national flag carrier Garuda Indonesia booked a net loss of 898.65 million U.S. dollars in the first half of this year as the COVID-19 pandemic hit travel-related industries hard.
Garuda Indonesia's President Director Irfan Setiaputra said in a statement on Tuesday that the company's revenue during the period was 696.8 million dollars, a 24 percent decrease from the same period last year.
The company's biggest revenue-generating operations - its scheduled airline services - booked 556.5 million dollars in the first half of this year, while the revenue from its unscheduled flights was recorded at 41.6 million dollars.
Its operating expenses, which include costs for flight operations, maintenance and repairs, reached 1.38 billion dollars during the first half of this year, Setiaputra said, adding that the expenses were down by 15.9 percent year-on-year.
He said the company's financial performance has been highly challenged by the country's COVID-19 restrictions, locally abbreviated as PPKM, which limits the mobility of the people in the archipelago in a bid to prevent further surges in COVID-19 cases.
"This has had a significant impact on the sustainability of the air transportation service business, not least for us at Garuda Indonesia, which fundamentally relies on people's mobility," Setiaputra said.
The state-owned airline is optimistic that there would be a performance recovery in the second half of this year in line with the easing of the PPKM policy following the decline in the number of daily cases.
Setiaputra said the average daily passenger traffic has been increasing by more than 50 percent after the easing of some of the curbs. Enditem
