“ATR also has agreed to fully support Citilink on the maintenance side for the first two years and to cooperate with Garuda’s maintenance, repair and overhaul company GMF AeroAsia,” says Wibowo. Under this agreement, ATR will providing maintenance technicians to ATR for the first two years, says Wibowo, adding that while it is normal practice for an aircraft manufacturer to assign one or two field representatives to a new customer, this deal will involve several more technicians.

Wibowo says Citilink plans to operate its ATR 72-600s from five hubs—Balikpapan, Batam, Jakarta, Lombok and Surabaya—across 45 routes. The number of daily frequencies will reach 300 in five years, he adds.

Services from Batam, an island near Singapore, will include international destinations such as Johor Bahru, Kuala Lumpur and Penang in Malaysia, Wibowo, while the ATRs will open domestic tourist destinations from Lombok.

Balikpapan is a hub for Kalimantan, one of Indonesia’s largest provinces, although Wibowo says the turboprops also will to link Balikpapan to Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia’s Sabah province.

Wibowo says turboprops are ideal for low density, high yield routes. Garuda will code-share on some of Citilink’s turboprop flights, he adds.