Garuda Indonesia Appoints New President Director

Garuda Indonesia Just Put a Former Chief Risk Officer in Charge, Less Than a Year After a $1.4 Billion Rescue That Failed to Keep Its Equity in the Black

Garuda Indonesia’s extraordinary shareholders’ meeting on October 8, 2026 appointed Thomas Sugiarto Oentoro as president director, replacing Glenny H. Kairupan, who becomes president commissioner in place of Fadjar Prasetyo. Oentoro has been Garuda’s deputy president director since October 2025. Before that he was the airline’s independent commissioner from 2023 to 2024, chief risk officer at the Indonesia Investment Authority (INA), the state asset fund, from 2024 to 2025, a vice president in OCBC’s mezzanine capital unit, and a managing director at KV Asia Capital. Garuda’s management says that investment and risk background is relevant because the airline needs a great deal of capital. That framing is the key to the appointment: Garuda has chosen a financier to lead an airline whose operations are improving but whose balance sheet is not.

A Promotion Inside the Same Team, Not a Clean Break

This is closer to a reshuffle than a replacement. Oentoro and Kairupan were both put into top roles at the October 2025 shareholders’ meeting, Kairupan as president director and Oentoro as his deputy. A year later the deputy takes the top job and the former chief moves up to chair the supervisory board. The Jakarta Post describes Kairupan as a retired military officer and a member of President Prabowo Subianto’s Gerindra Party who held the top operating job for only a year. The same meeting restructured the board: Garuda abolished the deputy president director and the old commercial director post and created a commercial director position, with a transformation director and a finance and risk management director also on the new line-up.

None of the reporting says Kairupan was removed for poor performance, and his move to president commissioner suggests it was not framed that way. What it does show is a state-controlled airline settling its leadership around the person with the financial skill set while keeping the previous chief in an oversight role.

The Recovery Is Real, and It Is Visible in the Numbers

Garuda’s first-half 2026 results show genuine progress. Group revenue rose about 16% to $1.80 billion from $1.55 billion a year earlier, and the net loss narrowed 23.2% to about $113 million. Another measure, the loss attributable to the parent company’s owners, was $120.7 million, down 18.4%. These are different measures of the same period, which explains why the figures reported differ. Cost control is visible too: non-fuel expenses rose only 3.9% to about $1.07 billion, well behind revenue growth, and cash payments to employees fell 7.2% to $219.7 million as the group’s workforce shrank. The airline had 104 aircraft in operation as of June, up from 102 serviceable aircraft at the end of March, part of its return-to-service programme to bring grounded jets back into use. Passenger traffic in the first quarter rose 6.76% to 5.42 million.

President Prabowo himself has acknowledged that Garuda came close to bankruptcy after dozens of its aircraft were grounded, which makes those fleet figures more than a routine operating statistic.

Why the Loss Persists Even Though Revenue Beats Operating Costs

On the disclosed first-half figures, revenue of $1.80 billion exceeded operating expenses of $1.74 billion, which on its own implies a small operating-level surplus. Yet the group still recorded a net loss of over $100 million. That is simple arithmetic from the reported numbers rather than a company statement, but it points to where the problem sits: below the operating line, in financing costs and the burden left over from Garuda’s debt and lease history. Garuda’s own first-quarter breakdown supports this, with a financial burden of about $104 million, the largest elements being the cost of returning leased aircraft and aircraft maintenance ($39.5 million) and lease expense ($38.7 million). Garuda’s 2022 court-approved restructuring dealt with more than $9 billion of debt, and the airline still reported a net loss of $319.4 million for full-year 2025 on revenue of $3.2 billion.

Operating expenses overall rose 16.35%, slightly faster than revenue’s 15.96% growth. With non-fuel costs up only 3.9%, most of the cost growth must have come from elsewhere in the cost base, and fuel is the obvious candidate, consistent with the fuel price shock this feed has documented across the industry through 2026. That inference is worth treating as such, since the figures disclosed do not break fuel out separately here.

The Equity Detail That Explains Why a Financier Got the Job

The most telling fact behind this appointment is reported by the Jakarta Globe: Garuda’s equity has fallen back below zero, less than a year after the airline restored positive equity following a capital injection of roughly $1.4 billion from Danantara Asset Management, approved in November 2025 (other reports cite about $1.3 billion). A rescue of that size was meant to stabilise the balance sheet, and the fact that equity slid back into negative territory within months is the clearest sign that operational improvement alone has not repaired the underlying financial position. A chief executive with a risk-management and capital-markets background is a logical response to a company whose problem is increasingly financial structure rather than flying.

A Domestic Airline With Limited Room to Diversify

Another number frames the challenge: 91.5% of Garuda’s revenue comes from domestic routes, with scheduled flights bringing in $1.31 billion of the half-year total. That concentration means Garuda’s results depend heavily on Indonesian domestic yields and demand, with little international revenue to offset a weak domestic market. It also means growth through returning aircraft to service only helps if the extra capacity is sold at yields that cover its cost, which is exactly the question Oentoro’s team must now answer.

What He Actually Has to Prove

The material disclosed gives revenue, loss, cost and fleet figures, but not cash flow, so the cleanest test of this appointment is one the numbers cannot yet answer: whether the narrowing loss turns into sustained positive cash generation without another large state injection. Three things will show it. First, whether returning grounded aircraft to service adds revenue faster than it adds lease and maintenance costs. Second, whether the financial burden shrinks relative to revenue as the debt structure is worked down. Third, whether equity turns positive again and stays there.

Garuda is not alone in changing leadership mid-recovery. This feed has covered Air India’s new CEO prioritising revenue and cost discipline while lenders question its cash flow, SriLankan Airlines putting an engineer into an acting CEO role, and Thai Airways suspending its chief after a flooding crisis. Garuda’s version is quieter than those: an airline whose operations are improving, handing its top job to the executive best equipped to deal with the balance sheet that the improvement has not yet fixed.