Garuda Indonesia is Indonesia’s national airline that takes flies people locally and internationally. Since Indonesia is around 90% of Indonesians are Muslims, Garuda Indonesia made the Muslim people their top customer segment.

During the Haj pilgrimage, Garuda Indonesia successfully flew 82,809 haj pilgrims from multiple embarkation points in Indonesia. Having multiple embarkation points is a strong point of difference Garuda has. After living in Indonesia for 17 years, I know other airlines that wants to fly international from other than Indonesia’s capital city Jakarta, has to transit through Jakarta first. The problem with this is that it is time consuming. By having multiple embarkation points Garuda just made it simpler and faster for its customers to travel abroad. Garuda was able to fly 82,809 pilgrims within a month as they effectively allocated their resources and had “six Airbus A330s, four Boeing 747s and one Boeing 777” (jakartapost) for that route.

Another point I am impressed with Garuda is that it was able to achieve a “90.8 percent on-time performance (OTP) rate” (jakartapost). This may not sound like a big deal in countries where flight delays are uncommon, but in Indonesia, delays are common and delays can take up to 4 hours. By achieving a high on-time performance percentage, Garuda improved its own image by simply being reliable.

In my opinion the story behind Garuda Indonesia’s success is not complicated, but basic. Garuda choose the right customer segment to target just by knowing the basic population facts of Indonesia and by simply being on time.

“Garuda’s On-time Performance Stands at 90%.” Home. The Jakarta Post Business, 08 Nov. 2014. Web. 08 Nov. 2014. <http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/11/08/garuda-s-time-performance-stands-90.html>.