Garuda Indonesia (GA, Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta) has restated its 2018 financial report from a modest USD5.01 million profit to a substantial net loss of USD175.02 million. The publicly listed airline was forced to refile its accounts following a directive from Indonesian regulators citing accounting irregularities. Despite the loss, Garuda's 2018 figures are an improvement on 2017 which saw it post a net loss of USD213.4 million.
As previously reported, the majority state-owned carrier had been told by the Ministry of Finance and the IDX stock exchange board to revise its results due to errors in how income from a contract to provide onboard wifi and mobile services had been classified, with the authorities imposing a set of sanctions on the carrier.
Revenues for the year were downgraded from USD4.37 billion to USD4.17 billion, while other operating inflows were cut from USD278.8 million to USD38.9 million.
Garuda said in a statement accompanying the 2018 results that despite the loss, its finances were heading in the right direction, pointing to what it said was a USD19.7 million profit for the first quarter of 2019, from a loss for the same period the previous year.
The full-service airline has struggled in recent years to compete with rivals such as Lion Air, while a series of sudden route changes has confused passengers.
In particular, it suspended its unprofitable London Heathrow-Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta service in October 2018 after several unsuccessful attempts at serving the UK market, later moving it to a direct route to Denpasar in Bali, in January, before changing it again on July 16 to Denpasar-Medan Kuala Namu-London Heathrow. The latter was operated initially by an A330-300, switching to a B777-300(ER) from July 18, and back to the A330 from August 8, and is a route which analysts have told the Financial Times is unlikely to break even.
