Garuda Indonesia Airways - GIA > Reviews (10)

I'm told that Australians use Garuda as a cheap way of getting to Bali which is a similar holiday destination to the Balearics for Brits! I can see how a short trip would be relatively painless, unless you were unfortunate enough to be on one of the Garuda crafts that have been in minor accidents/failures over the years!

We booked a relatively expensive holiday with Kuoni, known for their high quality award winning long haul holidays. All the Kuoni holidays I've been on have always lived up to expectations and I will continue to use them in the future. However this particular holiday to Bali did not start well as a result of Garuda.

We stood in a pack of confused people at Gatwick Airport for around 3 hours as the departure time came and went. Only after this long were we told that the plane had broken down in Bangkok and wouldn't be here until the next day. We waited another 2 hours before being ferried off to a reasonable hotel in Crawley. We ended up staying at this hotel for 2 nights! Not quite the island holiday we were looking forward to.

Once finally on our way the plane was packed, with very little leg room for a 6,1" like me! The food was really quite foul, grey fish and mystery meat, so I'm quite glad I slept through some of it to be honest. The way they served the refreshments was to bring round a tray with various pre-filled cups on it which you had to grab at if you were to get what you wanted. Unfortunately, for my girlfriend and I, we were in one of those no-mans-land seats, where the hostess from the front and back of the aisle meet in the middle with nothing left on their trays, never to return with replenished stocks!

A total of 18 hours of this was quite frankly too much!

We had a fantastic holiday when we finally got there and the hotel/resort was a great example of Kuoni's well selected destinations. It's just a shame that the whole experience was slightly ruined when we had to get back on one of these hideous Garuda flights for another 18 hours to get home!

I'd definitely advise anyone to pay the extra hundred or so pounds to fly with an alternative airline, it makes such a big difference when flying long haul.