Saturday 10 November 2018

Sriwijaya Air celebrates its 15th Anniversary on 10 November 2018

Report by : Gan Yung Chyan
                  / KUCINTA SETIA
Distributed to All Press & Travel Professionals




Sriwijaya Air Group, the third largest airline group of Indonesia after Garuda Indonesia Group and Lion Group, celebrates Sriwijaya Air's 15th Anniversary on 10 November 2018, Indonesia's National Heroes Day, at Cengkareng Business City. Well-wishers from its destination network in Indonesia and friends from China, Malaysia and Singapore congratulated the airline for entering its 15th year of commercial flight operations.



To mark this day of beautiful memories, Sriwijaya Air has specially printed its 15th Anniversary logo on its Sriwijaya Air and NAM Air Inflight Magazine Sriwijaya. It also introduced its new simplified livery showing local brand www.tiket.com along with its two-alphabet flight prefix SJ on one of its B737 aircraft in Soekarno Hatta International Airport, Jakarta.



A spokesman of Sriwijaya Air said the simplified livery does not mean that it is changing its livery forever on its fleet. As the airline is accepting commercial brand advertising on its aircraft, aircraft that will spot commercial brands will spot the prefix "SJ".  The airline has no intention to revamp its entire fleet livery.

Sriwijaya Air is the brainchild of the Lie family brothers Chandra Lie and Henry Lie who originated from Pangkal Pinang, the capital of Bangka-Belitung neighbouring Sumatra. It was formed in April 2003 by these brothers with their partners Johannes Bundjamin and pilot Andy Halim. There are also experts who participated in the birth of Sriwijaya Air. They include Supardi Syahrial, Capt Kusnadi Yusuf, Capt Adil W, Capt Harick L, Gabriella Sonia, Suwarsono and Koko Widodo, according to Sriwijaya Air. It started initial flight operation between Jakarta and Pangkal Pinang on 10 November 2003 using a B737-200 aircraft which belonged to defunct Bouraq Airlines. 




Below is a timeline of Sriwijaya Air over the past 15 years

10 November 2003 - Sriwijaya Air launches domestic flights from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang, Palembang, Jambi and Pontianak using B737-200 aircraft.

2007 - Sriwijaya Air launched scheduled flight between Medan Polonia and Penang using B737-400 aircraft.

18 December 2008 - Sriwijaya Air launches daily flight from Jakarta to Singapore. The service is suspended after 1 November 2013 due to operation requirements and the airline's focus on Malaysia and Indonesia flights.

2009 to 2012 - Focus on expanding its domestic flight network.

10 May 2013 - Regular flight linking Denpasar with Dili is launched.

26 September 2013 - Sriwijaya Air launches NAM Air, its commuter feeder service subsidiary linking smaller cities of Indonesia with flights to Jakarta. Flights are operated with B737-500 aircraft transferred from its parent airline. Sriwijaya Air and NAM Air are collectively known as Sriwijaya Air Group.

10 November 2013 - NAM Air launches commercial flight from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang.

8 November 2013 - Sriwijaya Air launches flight from Kualanamu to Ipoh.

24 November 2014 - Regular flight to Kuala Terangganu is launched from Kualanamu until 2016.

15 December 2014 - Sriwijaya Air introduces second daily flight to Penang from Kualanamu. In the same month, it launched scheduled charter flight to Dhaka from Kualanamu, becoming the first Indonesian airline to link Indonesia with Bangladesh.

January 2015 onwards - Scheduled charter flights from Kualanamu and Denpasar to China were introduced.

16 June 2015 - Sriwijaya Air signs order for 2 B737-900 ER with Boeing.

20 August 2015 - The 2 B737-900 ER aircraft are received.

2016 - Focus on regional growth through NAM Air. Sriwijaya Air took delivery of B737-800 aircraft and transferred more B737-500 aircraft to NAM Air.

January 2017 onwards - Sriwijaya Air moved its Head Office from Soekaro-Hatta M1 Cengkareng to Cengkareng Business City at 21 Jalan Atang Sanjaya, Soekarno Hatta Airport district, Tangerang. It launched limited charter flights from Tanjung Pinang to China.



15 December 2017 - Sriwijaya Air launches charter flight from Tanjung Pandan to Singapore. Services continue until January 2018.

2018 onwards - Stock trading through Initial Public Offering (IPO) to raise funds to purchase 15 B737-800 NG and 2 new wide-body B777-300 ER. 



17 October 2018 to 19 October 2018 - Sriwijaya Air Group exhibit in ITB Asia 2018 for the first time.

Sriwijaya Air took its name from the Sumatra Kingdom of Srivijaya, representing the Pangkal Pinang founders' desire to unite all cities of Indonesia through air transportation. Its logo is the stylized version of the Chinese characters "Ru-Yi" (如意). It means "whatever we want and put our heart into, we can achieve it". Its corporate colours are white, blue and red. White signifies purity. Blue represents the airline's ambition to spread its wings and fly to the remote corners of Indonesia from the world while red signifies the airline's courage to solve problems and make decisions.



Sriwijaya Air Group has a fleet of more than 56 aircraft including B737-900 ER, B737-800 NG, B737-300 and B737-500 W aircraft with maintenance by ST Aerospace Singapore, Malaysia Airlines Systems (MAS) and Garuda Maintenance Facility (GMF). It flies to 64 cities in Indonesia while 11 international cities including Penang, Dili, Changsha, Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Haikou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Nanning, Quanzhou and Wuhan are served by Sriwijaya Air aircraft. It plans to launch a new route to Australia. 

After successfully serving more than 60 destinations in the domestic and regional regions, Sriwijaya Air Group is working to realize that it is necessary to open a flight to Australia. The determination is getting closer when the Civil Aviation Authority of Australia, Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), conducted audits to the Sriwijaya Air Group office after 4 to 6 September 2018.






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