Batik Air Reliability?

[Kendall Raine]

Keep your head on a swivel.

Bingo. As with all things when traveling overseas.

Boarding passes can be printed hours before flight time and will not reflect last minute changes. Monitors have a better chance (no guarantee) of being right. I would never rely on a boarding pass for that reason. I would also get to the gate early and keep aware. Notices will always be in Indonesian (maybe in English) so pay attention. "Garuda satu dua lima (Garuda 125) ke Denpasar (to Denpasar) berangkat dari gerbang lima puluh satu (departing from gate 51)" ain't that hard to follow if you have a simple phrase book. Besides, if everyone in the gate area jumps up and waddles down the concourse to a different gate that's a good hint...

 

[NorCalDM]

The group I travel to dive with has an inside joke called getting Batiked! Those that have used them can probably figure out what it means.

 

[underwater_j]

Both Batik Air and Garuda flies to Sorong.
Plus with Garuda is that that they have allocation of 20kgs of sports equipment which is free even for economy class tickets.
You need to buy extra luggage if you intend to bring your diving gears along when flying with Batik Air.

As for reliability: it is a hit and miss. It all depends on your luck.

 

[stepfen]

On top of everything else, it is one thing to have your flight canceled/postponed and if lucky make it to your destination on time with alternatives and an entirely different thing to get your money back. Especially if/when the tickets were booked through an agent (tiket.com or similar). You will have to spend endless hours explaining the situation to random clerks of the agent who will blame the air company, then endless hours explaining the situation to random clerks of the air company who will refuse all responsibility sending you back to the agent and so it goes, until you give up (and they pocket the money).

Happened to me once (2 adults, 2 kids, Jakarta Sorong). At the end we got the fare back, as my wife is Indonesian and she didn't give up trying, but we never got back taxes (quite some money for 4 tickets).
It is years ago (pre Covid) so maybe things are better now, although I kind of doubt it.

My take? Always buy tickets directly from the airline and hope for the best. Worst case you will have to deal with one less middle-person.

I've also done quite a few other flights with Batik over the years and generally things have worked out, other than "small" changes (up to 60mins reschedules, last moment change of gates, "non-stop flights" making a stop etc).

In the past (pre covid) Batik was quite cheaper than Garuda so we had to make a choice. Last year Garuda's price (Jakarta to Sorong direct) was actually cheaper than Batik (Jakarta to Sorong through Makasar) so it was an easy choice.