Citilink (QG, Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta) has again deferred maintaining a scheduled international presence amid reports it has now set reaching longterm profitability as this year's primary objective.

According to CAPA, though the Garuda Indonesia (GA, Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta) budget subsidiary did in fact begin international operations from Surabaya to Johor Bahru in Malaysia in March last year, it abandoned the route after only a month. Thereafter, plans to connect Surabaya with Kuala Lumpur International and Singapore Changi and Denpasar with Kuala Lumpur, Perth International, and Singapore were subsequently deferred until later this year though in all likelihood, those flights will now only begin in 2016.

Citilink’s new CEO Albert Burhan says his airline will, for the duration of this year, focus on international charter flights which began with service to Saudi Arabia and China early last month. The airline is contracted to operate the Saudi Arabia charters until July while the China charters are currently contracted through to the end of this month.

As such, the carrier plans to ramp up its current 3x weekly Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta to Jeddah International via Medan Kuala Namu and Mumbai International service, to 6x weekly while correspondingly decreasing its China services from 28 monthly return flights, to 18.

Though Citilink does not intend to operate charters on a year-round basis, it is keen to continue operating charters during off-peak periods in the domestic market, Burhan added.

The charter flights will provide welcome financial relief to the airline which has struggled to reach sustainable profitability since 2012. Following its transition from a Garuda strategic business unit to a subsidiary in mid-2012, Citilink has, until the second quarter of last year, been consistently in the red racking up accumulated losses of about USD100 million. However, its fortunes took a turn for the better during the third quarter of last year when it posted a net profit of USD4 million.

Burhan says the prospect of guaranteed profits on every charter flight could help his carrier to post a break-even result for the first quarter of this year before posting a profit during the next.