Batik Air Launches New Non-stop Perth To Bali Flights

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Batik Air has announced their new flight right from Perth to Denpasar. The service will run four times weekly and serve thousands of passengers between Western Australia and Bali. 

The direct flight takes just 3 hours and 50 minutes. It offers travelers an alternative to JetStar and AirAsia, both of whom serve the same route. Speaking to reporters, the General Manager of I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport, Handy Heryudhitiawan, said, ‘I congratulate Batik Air on the opening of this inaugural flight, and Australia has 7 cities that can be served. Hopefully, we can connect with other Australian cities, and we are ready to synergize with Batik Air’.

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The news comes as another key signal that the Island of the Gods continues to progress away from the devastation of the pandemic. Increased flight schedules to Australia from Indonesia can only serve to strengthen ties and support economic growth. 

The Batik Air Perth-Bali service launch comes at just the right time. Airlines had been taking a cautious approach to reopening and launching new flight schedules in the wake of the pandemic. Still, tourism numbers to Bali over the last nine months have proven to be sustainable. 

Heryudhitiawan went on to explain ‘Looking at the current trend, the most foreigners in the January-August 2022 period who came were dominated by Australia with 277,034 passengers, then India with 71,613 passengers and the United Kingdom with 61,070 passengers. Therefore, Batik Air is not wrong to open its inaugural flight from Perth to Bali’. 

The service will run Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and tickets remain available for this week’s flights. The first Perth-Bali flight landed in Denpasar on Saturday, 17th September. The aircraft was welcomed by a water cannon salute, and passengers received flower garlands as they entered the terminal building.

A similar welcome was afforded to passengers and crew arriving on Batik Air’s first post-pandemic Bali-Melbourne flight in June 2022. Batik Air’s Bali-Melbourne route operates every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Batik Air also serves the Bali-Brisbane route.

The news will come as welcome news for many Australian travelers who wish to return to Bali but have vowed never to use budget airline JetStar ever again after travel chaos earlier this month. Thousands of travelers were stranded in Bali as the airline experienced engineering issues, short staffing, and aircraft shortages.

Australian and New Zealand holidaymakers in Bali were left out of pocket, many forking out thousands of dollars to get home on time while they waited for Jetstar to release compensation and refunds. The airline has issued an apology, and regular services have been resumed. 

While speaking to the press over the weekend, Bali Airport General Manager Handy Heryudhitiawan shared updates about traveler numbers in the year to date. He confirmed that Bali Airport served 6,918,086 passengers between January and the end of August 2022. These passengers were served across ’48,899 aircraft movements and 22 international flight routes, and 21 domestic flight routes’.

Earlier this month, Deputy Bali Governor Cok Ace told reporters that he is calling on the Indonesian government to subsidize flights to Bali for international travelers to help promote the island’s tourism economy. The Deputy Governor noted that in some cases, flights to Thailand from Australia were cheaper than from Australia to Bali and that the government would be wise to take the opportunity to make tourism in Bali more accessible for international visitors.

Looking ahead to the rest of the year, Heryudhitiawan said, ‘Hopefully, in the future, the movement of passengers on both international and domestic routes will continue to increase’. Bali has set targets of welcoming one and a half million international visitors by the end of the year and seven million domestic arrivals, and they are right on track.