Review of Garuda Indonesia flight Denpasar → Seoul in Economy

This was the first of two flights home from a vacation in Indonesia, back in 2014.

CDG - NRT : Air France (Boeing 777-300ER) Sunrise
NRT - DPS : Garuda Indonesia (Boeing 777-300ER) The island of Gods
DPS - JOG : Garuda Indonesia (Boeing 737-800) The city of the Ramayana
JOG - SUB : Sriwijaya Air (Boeing 737-800) A zero height volcano
MLG- DPS : Wings Air (ATR72-600) The sulfur volcano
DPS – ICN : Garuda Indonesia (Airbus 330-300) The calm of the morning YOU ARE HERE
ICN – CDG : Korean Air (Airbus 380-800) Bad flight

This FR starts with the return of the rented car at the international terminal drop and kiss area. There had been a lot of traffic leaving the airport when we arrived on a Sunday evening, but the traffic was completely fluid on that Saturday evening. We were therefore half an hour ahead of our rendezvous, but the Avis staff was already there. Avis does not have an office in the airport to save on rental space (the staff told me this was the reason); I had chosen them rather than cheaper local rentals because of the latter’s’ dubious insurance coverages. Having a comprehensive insurance package did not preclude being a careful driver : a few seconds were enough for the Avis staff to see that the car did not have a scratch after 550 km on the often incredibly narrow Bali roads, and the whole procedure was super-fast. He did not even check the fuel gauge which was scrupulously the same as when I had taken the car. At a uniform and quasi-subsidized 6,500 IDR per liter price, a quarter full tank was worth 5 euros only, anyway.



The new international terminal of DPS was inaugurated in 2014 and was therefore in mint condition at time of flying. It was an impressive change from the aging terminal that we had seen two years earlier.



Going slightly up toward the terminal itself from the drop and kiss area.



The FIDS at the top of the ramp



The Arrivals at the lower level



A long luggage trolleys snake pushed by several airport staff winds its way towards the slope down.



There appeared to be an observation platform ("Promenade") , but it was night and Mrs. Marathon was spared a plane spotting session outside.



There were toilets on the left, whose male and female sections were indicated by quite realistic silhouettes, together with very tiny standard pictograms.



The toilets were spotlessly clean



The landside zone



In case you feared a withdrawal syndrome, there was this stand selling fruit that Westerners would call exotic, but were local there. Better be aware of the applicable regulations with regards to the import of fresh plants in your country of destination.



The FIDS had already started displaying the flights of the next day, i.e. beyond midnight. Out of 19 flights, 13 were Australia-bound !



A first security control checkpoint limits any further access to the passengers only.



I suspected that we would see again this young couple holding Garuda tickets and Korean passports.



Arrival in the check-in zone. The counters are dedicated per flight, indicated by signs



… which do not always correspond to the reality, because the flight being checked in here was going to Brisbane.



The Australian passengers were the surfer kind



… at all counters



Flight GA870 was not announced on the screens yet, but that was the flight on which this young couple seen at the security check was checking in, and so would we after them.



We had more than 6 kg more of checked luggage than on the preceding Wings Air [which had a 10 kg free checked luggage allowance] : this time, I had not bothered to optimize our hand luggage since the allowance was much more generous.



The cause of this extra weight was partly behind these dancers,



… who were hiding an oversized parking lot and an even more oversized shopping center offering souvenirs for tourists. It was located in the middle of nowhere on the north coast of Bali, and was therefore a lot cheaper than in the tourist areas.



It was not as creative as Skymall, but I have not been very far from buying as a present (37,500 IDR = 2.50 EUR) this horrendously kitsch clock decorated with shells, which was setting a record in its aesthetics category.



I asked for a window seat, and received seats 21A + 21B for the DPS-ICN flight, but seats 53E+53F had no chance to be window seats on the connecting ICN-CDG flight. I did not worry too much about it: we were going to have a long connection in ICN, which meant that we would have ample time to try having better seats before all passengers had checked in.

The flower decoration of an unused counter.



The next step was paying the airport departure tax, which in DPS had jumped from 150,000 IDR to 200,000 IDR for international flights, which meant that it was nearly stable in EUR, since the rupiah had lost a lot of ground in two years. The presence of the tax sticker on the reverse side of the BP was checked at two successive places after this counter (which was a waste of manpower, if you think about it, compared to including it in the airfare like in nearly any other country in the world). There were ATMS for passengers who had forgotten about this last minute expense, a few meters on the right.



Going through the second security check. My laptop stayed in its case; the bottle of passenger which contained about one liter of an apparently food liquid (soup??) of another passenger appeared to generate a lot of questioning by the staff. In many other countries, it would have been discarded, period, but I did not know its eventual fate. An unoccupied security check counter, below.



I had some loose Indonesian cash which was nevertheless bulky, because the biggest bill in the country is 100,000 IDR, or 6.50 EUR. The Indonesian rupiah is not a strong currency, and I chose not to take the risk of depreciation until next time I might visit the country. At time of posting this English version of the report, the euro went down significantly against major currencies, but so did the rupiah : the rate is now 6.57 EUR.

There was an exchange booth here.



The rates were expectedly less favorable than with the informal exchange booths in town, but not that bad for the euro: the spread between buying and selling rate was 6%. The lowest spread was for the USD and GBP, at 5.3%. The Papua New Guinean kina had a 22% spread and South Koreans were massacred at 67%.

(A warning to USD holders : all money changers in Indonesia applied a less favorable exchange rate for smaller denomination bills. Bring 100 USD bills if you can. The other currencies had a uniform exchange rate).



Going through immigration control was very fast, and then we had to go through a duty-free shop. I always hate that.



It was made worse by a promotional event, with very loud congratulations and pictures of a winner of a prize whose nature I did not try to identify.



More of the same, and I was impatient of reaching at last the boarding gates



… because I was still wearing "city clothes", i.e. very light ones, and there were ice cold drafts everywhere. I had warmer clothes in my hand luggage, but I needed to reach toilets to put them on, and I had to go all the way through this duty-free area to find them.



There were food outlets like this one (note that the Premier Lounge upstairs was signposted as being still in construction)



… with amusing alcoves for tables for four.



It is an endless duty-free shopping maze.


The end is near



At last !



Mrs. Marathon was FB-Silver then, and I no longer had an Elite status, so we had no access to this room.



It did not seem very fancy, but did have a rare luxury : power ports, and my readers know that I need them the way others need a smoking room.



I went through the entire terminal and found power ports in only two configurations :

First of all, there was a port at ground level between the male and female toilets access. See by the way the traditional costumes decorating them



This staff must have finished charging his cell phone. There were a total of four such locations, which of course required sitting on the ground next to the toilets and made a multiple socket extender a must, because most power ports were already being used.



There was also at one end of the terminal, near Gate 1, this set of power ports for self-use.



There were a total of six only, laid out so that you needed to be standing while your equipment was being charged.



That made a total of ten power ports accessible to the passengers in the entire airside international flights zone of DPS, and none was next to a seat. Granted, this was better than zero, and I have been in airports without a single visible power port. But for me, this is an unacceptable lack of consideration for passengers in terminal which opened in 2013.



Power ports could be considered as a non-essential service. What about seating? Depending on the gates, there were either 155 or 310 of them, which was not quite enough for single aisle and double aisle aircrafts, respectively. The result was that when the time of boarding was getting close, some passengers were sitting on the ground, because they did not have a choice.



Of course, when you remove seats, you can have wide circulation areas



With some stranded passengers along the walls.



Now that I have complained about all the negative points, let’s look at the positive ones. Each gate was an extension from the main structure of the terminal, with widows on three sides, which meant that there was an excellent view of the tarmac and the runway. In daytime, there could be good landing and take-off pictures. At night, I needed to fight against reflections, but this was a very plane spotter friendly terminal.

GA777



Virgin Australia737



NZ763



Jetstar787



Another good point was a free wifi internet access. (Note the personalized ad in the lower section of the screen^^)



There were FIDS screens everywhere – you would expect that in a brand new terminal – but the information was not very coherent. Our BPs indicated Gate 6, and so did the FIDS at 21:56



But it was a flight to NRT at Gate 6



There were some shops of “essentials" (food, travel accessories), whose overhead labelling was amusing. The so-called “travel accessories” looked more like electronic accessories, the "electronic accessories" were actually inflatable pillow on the left and drugstore ware on the right, and the "travel pillows" looked more like sweets. I did not quite understand if the condoms were for use in the terminal or on flight.



Only much later was Gate 9 announced for Flight GA870,and the preceding flight GA718 to Melbourne.



There was a systematic hand luggage check for the flight to Melbourne, which appeared to consist in confiscating the bottles of water (tough luck for those who had just bought them airside).



Once Flight GA718 had departed came our turn to board, without any security check. There was a call for J or FB-Elite, without any result: DPS is a “beach” (or vacation) destination and few people go there in business class.



The Koreans were up to their reputation for discipline, and the lines were orderly. Mrs. Marathon has a long experience of unfamiliar airports and directed me to the line on the left.



The display above the counter was stuck at GA718, which was somewhat confusing.



Mrs. Marathon chose the left line because she had seen that it was leading to an escalator, whereas you had to take stairs after the line on the right.



Once downstairs (or down the escalator), there was no risk for getting lost : a staff directed us here to the right.



More walking, with the option of a travellator



And then this jet bridge with windows



… and there was here yet another staff (with white shirt and necktie) to direct the passengers.



The newspaper stand only had papers in Indonesian and in Korean (despite appearances,東亞日韓 is not a Chinese newspaper, and I can only read its title).



Going through the J cabin which was very empty and probably remained so.



Arrival in the Y cabin



… and these are our seats. The advantage of a 333 on a 77W is its 2-4-2 layout, versus 2-3-3 for the latter, which meant that a couple could have an ideal “window seat + aisle seat” combination.



The inconvenient of GA’s 333 is that it only offered UCB ports, not 110 V ports. But that was a night flight – a short night! – during which we were going to try to sleep . Writing a Flight Report would wait for the connection in ICN and the ensuing day flight. These supports were not very clean, but they were below the seats and invisible without unrealistic contortions.



The seat width was OK for Economy



… and so was the seat pitch that I measured as I always do from the front magazine pocket with its current load of airline magazines if any.



There were good head rests, but we did not use them



The seat seen from the back



The seat recline was minimal



The IFE size was good and so as the quality



The screen was tactile, but its reaction time was sluggish. Mrs. Marathon criticized the location of the control in the armrest because she hit it inadvertently several time during the night, which caused the IFE to light up, waking her up (a problem that other Flight Reporters have underlines in other reports).



The safety car, both sides



This magazine in the folder on the partition wall at the rear of the cabin reminds that South Korea is every active in so-called « medical tourism », plastic surgery for Far-Eastern women who can afford it, or more vital medical care for patients whose health systems are either unreliable or unaffordable.



Pushback, next to an MU A330



and distribution of oshiboris



An FA came up and squatted next to Mrs. Marathon using her name, or rather her terrible rendition, because the pronunciation of our real name is a nightmare for most foreigners. Anyway, she kindly enquired about the well-being of Mrs. Marathon and recommended her to call her if she had any problem. She had us choose our breakfast (obviously so that our choice be still available); “do you want to be awaken for breakfast or keep sleeping ?”. We chose to be awaken no matter what.

This individualized care appeared to be due to the fact that Mrs. Marathon was still FB-Silver at the time, which made her a VIP. Our experience was that each time she was traveling to Asia offering an award ticket to her husband (on AF the year before, GA that time), the FA were especially attentive towards her. The difference was that no Air France AF would physically lower herself below the level of passenger: that must be cultural.

I never had the slightest gesture of recognition when I was FB-Gold or Platinum, maybe another case of gender-based discrimination : )



The contents of the amenity kit. I was more interested by the container (a rather convenient zipped nylon pouch) than by its contents (a pair of “airline socks”, and a face masks like the dozens that I already have).



But note the presence of a small bottle of water ; AF was not offering that on the CDG-NRT flight.



The safety demonstration was entirely on the IFE, in Indonesian and in English, subtitled in Korean. There had been much car in the design, which evoked to me cargo plane in which some seats would have been disposed, because of the incredible space around them.



The cargo plane leaves on a sea of clouds



… and our passenger plan leaves towards Runway 09



The cabin in night mode for take-off



This time again, I would have needed a much more sensitive camera to post decent night aerial shots. In the lower part of the picture, you can see the T-shaped toll road (12,500 IDR, or 0.85 EUR, at time of posting this report) which was built recently in the bay east of the isthmus where DPS is located.



During at least an hour, there was a « shopping mall » piped music, at a very low sound setting, better nevertheless quite useless and bothersome when you tried to get some sleep. Much worse, the IFEs suddenly sprang to life, without any possibility to turn them off, for a GA corporate ad. It did not understand the point for that ad, since it was inflicted on customers who had chosen to fly on GA.



Mrs. Marathon tried to take a picture proving that the FAs had discreetly changed their high heel shoes for much more flat and more convenient ones, but it was too dark and using a flash would have been too indiscrete.



Distribution of wraps with a nondescript taste and of a drink.



That of Mrs. Marathon was completely cold. It had obviously not been heated at all. She complained had it changed immediately, no questions asked.



And then, the cabin was set to dark mode and all passengers on board tried to get some sleep.



Not very easily for the Marathons : I found the seat too hard and the incline was too limited to be useful.



Dawn was coming on the other side of the aircraft,



… and the continuing to sleep as proposed by the FA was not a real option, because after the not very progressive lighting of the cabin,



… the captain made a long speech in Indonesian and then in rather unsteady English, including the hope that we had slept well. We would have slept a few extra minutes if he had not woken up everybody with his chattering.

I went to the very narrow toilets



A FA had placed a child meal for this girl who was still asleep



Where were we now ?



I had no way of knowing, because the airshow was inoperable during the entire flight



This is the only information that I obtained, of dubious reliability (zero distance to destination ?).



Distribution of the breakfast : there were three FAs in one aisle and two in the other to handle this part of the cabin.



This is the menu that we could select from.



I chose the Indonesian version, which was presented like this, with the pastry brought later and laid upside down on the tray.



The same, after removal of the wrappings



The Indonesian dish was slightly spicy,



… but it was possible to raise the spice level with the contents of the bag. When you go to a restaurant meant for Indonesians, the quantity of spice can rival with the incredible amount used in the inland Chinese provinces. The mild French recipes are on another planet^^



Mrs. Marathon had cautiously selected the Western version, which was tilak pedas ("without hot peppers", an expression which is part of Survival Indonesian 101 when eating local food only in Java).



Mrs. Marathon asked for and received both coffee AND apple juice.



The silverware is not in silver of course, but the quality is good by Economy class standards.



This article and ad were for me, and maybe that was why it was in English only^^



A number of articles in the in-flight magazine appeared nearly the same in English, Japanese and Chinese.



But the core of the magazine was actually in English.



No kidding, this is an air-to-air picture!



At maximum (x20) zoom setting, it was the white dot in the middle here. Forget about identifying the aircraft…



This was another failure : these contrails betrayed an aircraft flying below and ahead of us.



A glimpse of the FA’s uniform – from the color, the closest one was the Maitre d'Cabin and the two others were service flight attendants. (Thank you BombieFlyer for the color code)



Window seat or not, there was not much to see



.. apart from the wing, of course



… and the winglet – I like its decoration



Some very hazy views of South Korea during the descent



The FA who was so careful for Mrs. Marathon’s well-being came again for some chatting and discovered that we were still a long way from home.



The archipelago off ICN, a minute or two before landing



Kiss landing to be praised



We taxied at a distance from the freight facilities, with a Polar 747 here



… and then turned around Terminal 2, used by the foreign airlines, which means that plane spotting is much more diversified than when parked at Terminal 1. I post processed the pictures to increase the contrast because it was a very hazy day. From left to right, CX, AY, VJ, BA, AF, VN, PA, and CA tails.



CZ A321 in front of United, Malaysian et Business Air aircrafts



T'way 738 and CZ A321, in front of two KE and DL747



Philippines Airlines A321 with winglets



Leaving the aircraft: the plane which has flown us that night was PK-GPE.



We parked at one end of Terminal 2, which meant that were needed to walk a full half length of the terminal. Most passengers used travellators, but I of course walked next to the windows.



VN A330 in Skyteam livery (VN-A371)



And in standard livery



AF 777



BA 777



Vietjet A320



KE A330 in special livery



KE 777 in Skyteam livery



Giant signs in Korean, English and French requested the passengers coming from countries hit by the Ebola fever epidemic to identify themselves at the sanitary control, where a form is to be given (with seat number, declaration of flu-like symptoms if any… it reminded me of the H1N1 epidemic).



Oddly, only the Korean and French versions are displayed again after this checkpoint.



The lines were very short at the immigration, but I had not planned to add South Korean stamps in my passport. We had landed in the The Land of the Morning Calm, aptly named because we would be spending five hours waiting for our next flight in a terminal which was very quiet indeed.



This is the end of the FR ; was ensues is a small Balinese tourist bonus.

Most tourist fly to Bali to party, surf, watch some traditional shows, but few go the north-western coast of the island because there is none of the above.

On the other hand, there are many very beautiful rice field terraces on the road to the way to that area.



… and some interesting temples on the coast. Like for instance Pulaki Temple, where the macaques feel all the more at home than the temple is dedicated to them.



In these conditions, they have the priority



… and when you entered through a gate, there is no proof that you will be able to exit though it later.



A family of apes could have decided to settle there for their own business.



In front, on the other side of the coastal road



… Pabean Temple belongs to them too.



This temple overlooks the sea



Apes are supposed to be clever, but the basics of quasi-static fluids mechanics are beyond their understanding. Why was the remaining water in that pipe flow from it now…



… but stopped flowing as soon as it was brought to the mouth to drink it more easily ?



What do these apes eat ? Gifts or brazen thievery, in part, and this one was waiting until Mrs. Marathon who had taken refuge inside the car would carelessly open the door or the window



In the wild, they eat leaves



Anyway, say it with flowers !