Indonesia based TransNusa made headlines when the airline with just two Airbus A320 and one Comac ARJ21-700 introduced its first international route from Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur on April 14, 2023.
The airline, which had to close its business operation in September 2020 due to impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the aviation industry, started operations again after injection of new shareholders and management team in October 2022.
Within six (6) months, the airline introduced its first international route between Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur.
TransNusa Group Chief Executive Officer, Datuk Bernard Francis said, “The international growth strategy combined with our domestic business operations’ approach has proven to be successful as we have reached our international Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for passengers in our first year of operations for our Jakarta-Kuala Lumpur route. Our main KPI is based on our On-Time Performance (OTP).
“When we re-launched TransNusa, we started from the bottom again. We had no aircraft or roadmap to follow. Everything was new because the pandemic had broken the aviation business operations boundaries. We re-created and customised our business operations and strategy model based on the post-pandemic scenario,” Bernard added.
“As such, for us, the success of our first international Jakarta-Kuala Lumpur route is a milestone and brings us great satisfaction. In the past 12 months, we have assisted in providing our services to more than 200,000 passengers and we have also maintained our three times a day frequency. In addition, as per our KPI for passengers, we have also maintained our On-Time Performance (OTP) of 94 percent,” he said, explaining that airline OTP is defined as an aircraft arrival at the gate under 15 minutes of the scheduled arrival time.
On why TransNusa could not achieve a 100 per cent OTP, Bernard said there were unavoidable circumstances that delayed a number of TransNusa flights.
“Our delays were consequential and unavoidable such as weather patterns and airport disruptions as well as heavy traffic. There were times when our flight was delayed because we could land due to bad weather or heavy traffic,” Bernard elaborated.
“We understand that OTP is one of the most important factors for passengers in deciding their choice of airline. Respecting passengers time is high on our list of deliverables and to showcase our commitment towards our passengers, we have specific aircrafts dedicated to fly this route.”
After launching its first international route between Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur, TransNusa launched three more new international routes by the end of last year. TransNusa’s aggressive international growth strategy combined with its domestic business operations approach has enabled the airline to be the fastest growing airline in South East Asia.
In 2024, the airline will not only celebrate the first year of its operations in Kuala Lumpur but it will also be celebrating the first year of operations in three other international locations that are Johor, Malaysia, Singapore and Guangzhou, China.
Since its re-launch, TransNusa became the first in the world to commission a Comac ARJ21-700 and TransNusa became the second airline in Indonesia to launch a Jakarta-Guangzhou route on November 16, last year.
On the domestic front, TransNusa, in keeping with its new player, new rules character, became the first in the world to offer direct flights between two world legendary destinations, which is Bali and Manado. This domestic route was launched in April, this year.