GMF AeroAsia is set for a further boost to sales after successive annual profits in its 2023 and 2024 financial years established recovery momentum from the pandemic period.
The MRO provider suffered several years of losses during the pandemic, when its main customer, flag carrier Garuda Indonesia, entered restructuring. GMF suffered a significant dip in business that in 2020 pushed it into breach of certain financial covenants and forced it to request a waiver from creditors and a restructure of its bank loans.
Today, the future looks much brighter, with Indonesia’s flag carrier set to receive a capital injection from Danantara, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, to help with MRO expenses and restoring aircraft to service.
Indonesian media have reported that Danantara will extend a shareholder loan totaling $405 million to Garuda Indonesia to improve the operational capacity and readiness of its fleet and that of LCC subsidiary Citilink.
Garuda has struggled to recover from the pandemic, with its group operational fleet well below its 2019 level.
In May, it was reported that the group had 15 aircraft grounded due to a lack of spare parts and maintenance funds.
Mainline Garuda will have 78 aircraft in service this year if it manages to return 11 from storage, according to Aviation Week Network’s Commercial Fleet & MRO Forecast 2025, and 84 next year if its final seven units come back from storage. These include 40 Boeing 737-800s and 27 Airbus A330 variants.
Citilink, meanwhile, could have 55 aircraft in service this year if it returns nine aircraft from storage. The subsidiary mainly operates A320-family aircraft.
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