Indonesian Low-Cost Airline: What Planes Does Citilink Fly?

on

With its main hub at Surabaya Juanda, Citilink is a provider of low-cost air travel throughout the country of Indonesia. The airline is a subsidiary of the country’s flag carrier, Garuda Indonesia, and currently has a fleet of 60 aircraft. Let’s take a look at the aircraft of Citilink.

Citilink A320
The airline has 49 Airbus A320s in its fleet. This further divides into A320ceos and A320neos. Photo: Getty Images

Let’s first take a look at the composition of the airline’s fleet as a whole. With data from Planespotters.net, the aircraft types are listed below with quantities in parentheses, along with average ages:

  • ATR72 (7): 7.5 years
  • Airbus A320-200 (39): 7.8 years
  • Airbus A320neo (10): 3.7 years
  • Airbus A330-900 (2): 2.0 years
  • Boeing 737-500 (2): 24.1 years

Examing Citilink’s fleet composition, we can see that the airline has a reasonably diverse stable of aircraft- especially when compared to other low-cost carriers around the world. Indeed, a common practice of low-cost airlines has been to adopt a single-type fleet for the sake of more cost-effective and efficient crew training and maintenance.

This appears to be something that Citilink is happy to forego- likely due to its parent airline Garuda Indonesia also operating a fairly diverse fleet. We would imagine that the two airlines are able to share resources in order to find cost savings amid a diverse range of aircraft.

Hand-me-downs from Garuda

One interesting aspect of the Citilink fleet is the fact that a number of its aircraft are “hand-me-downs” from parent airline Garuda Indonesia. This practice of moving aircraft between brands within the same airline group can be seen around the world. Examples include Air Canada and its Rouge subsidiary, as well as with fellow Canadian airlines WestJet and Swoop.

In the case of Garuda Indonesia and Citilink, the former has passed down a handful of aircraft to the latter. This includes four of seven ATR72s, as well as both Boeing 737-500s still being used by the carrier.

The two aircraft that are very much NOT from Garuda Indonesia are Citilink’s two Airbus A330-900s. These two neos technically come brand new, straight from Airbus, but were originally ordered by now-defunct Icelandic airline WOW Air. The all-purple budget airline ceased operations in March of 2019. With the airline’s sudden closure, Airbus had to find new customers for these two widebodies.

Offering an elevated level of service, Citilink’s A330s have two classes and divide to 42 seats in a premium economy cabin, with the remaining 323 seats set aside for standard economy. These two aircraft are currently listed as “parked.”

Undoubtedly the core of the Citilink fleet are its Airbus A320s. These jets can be further divided into the -200 (ceo) variant, and the much newer NEO generation.

Interestingly, 48 of these 49 aircraft have an all-economy configuration with 180 seats. Citilink’s one exception is the A320 registered PK-GLN. This jet is currently listed as a “preighter,” or make-shift freighter. This modification took place in October of 2021 and has its special status recognized with a special “Cargo” sticker applied to its livery.

Have you ever flown with Citilink? Share your experiences by leaving a comment.



from Simple Flying https://ift.tt/3xQY3eO
via IFTTT

Comments

Post a Comment