Perseroan Terbatas JambiJet, operating as JambiJet, is an Indonesian low cost scheduled airline headquartered on the grounds of Sultan Thaha Syaifuddin Airport (DJB), formerly known as Palmerah Airport, located in Jambi City, Indonesia. In addition to Jambi-DJB, JambiJet also operates hubs at Soekarno–Hatta International Airport (CGK) in Jakarta, Indonesia, and at Juanda International Airport (SUB) in Surabaya, Indonesia.
Founded in 2013 by Budiwati Angkasa, the airline began in Jambi City but later bought out other airlines based in Jakarta and Surabaya to become one of the largest privately owned airlines in Indonesia. Though technically considered a low cost carrier (LCC), in reality JambiJet follows more of a hybrid model by offering considerable legroom even in its basic economy cabin, very few baggage fees, no change fees, reasonably priced upgrade packages and free high-speed WiFi.
History
Budiwati Angkasa - The Early Years
JambiJet was founded by Budiwati Angkasa, the eldest daughter of the powerful industrialist Santoso Angkasa, the wealthiest person in Southeast Asia. Born in Jambi, Ms Angkasa grew up in the Indonesian capital city of Jakarta, and attended university at UCLA in Los Angeles, California USA, where she graduated with an MBA degree in 1996.
Instead of returning to Indonesia to work for her father’s industrial conglomerates, Ms Angkasa stayed in the US and went to work for the American low cost carrier CalJet. She had originally planned to work at CalJet for perhaps 3-5 years to gain some airline management experience, then return to Indonesia to take a higher ranking position there. However, she ended up staying with CalJet for 16 years, and by 2011 at age 42 she became the company CFO (chief financial officer).
Startup
In early 2012 Ms Angkasa decided that she was ready to return to Indonesia to start her own airline. While vacationing back in Indonesia during Asia’s Lunar New Year holiday, she convinced her father to provide the financial backing after extended discussion on the matter. Air travel in Indonesia was somewhat expensive in those days, so Ms Angkasa planned to follow CalJet’s recipe as a low cost carrier (LCC), offering single class seating with lower fares and mostly pay as you go amenities. Passengers would be allowed one free checked bag but would have to pay a small fee for additional checked baggage as well as any carry-on items other than diaper bags or women’s purses.
After returning to the US, Ms Angkasa secured three leased Airbus A320-200s set to become available in early 2013. She officially established PT JambiJet, based it at Jambi-DJB, and then in May 2012 officially notified the CalJet board of directors that she would be leaving the company by year’s end.
The original plan for the JambiJet livery design was going to be a stylized version of the white and red flag of Indonesia. But while visiting relatives in Jambi in November 2012, Ms Angkasa received some unexpected inspiration for the tail livery designs - thanks to the colorful batik sarees worn by three of her nieces during her visit. After the visit she decided to have each individual aircraft painted with its own unique batik pattern design.
After saying her farewells to colleagues at CalJet, Ms Angkasa visited the JetStream Aerospace paintshop at San Bernardino-SBD in January 2013, where she personally oversaw the design and implementation of the first three batik patterns used, which were remakes of her niece’s saree patterns.
JambiJet began operations on 15 April 2013, with flights initially running between Jambi-DJB and Jakarta-CGK, Surabaya-SUB, and Singapore-SIN. The airline added other routes over time as more aircraft were brought into the fleet, so that by 2016 the company was flying to about 15 destinations around Indonesia from Jambi-DJB, plus international flights to Singapore-SIN and Kuala Lumpur-KUL.
Acquisition of Elang Air
In 2016, Surabaya-based Elang Air found itself unable to pay its employees salary or benefits for three straight months. by December 2016 most of the company’s pilots and cabin crewmembers had resigned en masse, and after nearly 40 years Elang Air was forced to shut down due to serious cash flow problems.
After quickly securing funding from her father, Ms Angkasa was able to jump in and buy out Elang Air at a steep discount. She was able to hire back nearly all of the company’s former employees, and restarted operations in early January 2017, just in time for the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday period. Elang Air was then merged into JambiJet by July 2017, and Surabaya-SUB became a 2nd (and more profitable) JambiJet hub.
Acquisition of Nilai Air
In October 2018, a 2nd Indonesia airline, a 50 year old legacy carrier named Nilai Air, abruptly found itself in severe financial straits and was forced to cease operations. This time, Ms Angkasa used her own financing and quickly acquired ownership of the Jakarta-based Nilai Air. By May 2019 the company had merged the former Nilai Air Jakarta base into a 3rd (and still more profitable) hub for JambiJet, making Jakarta-CGK JambiJet’s most prestigious hub.
Nilai Air’s route network was extensive, but it was entirely domestic in nature. So JambiJet added several international routes to destinations picked up from JambiJet’s previous 2017 acquisition of Elang Air. This added flights from Jakarta-CGK to Bangkok-BKK, Ho Chi Minh City-SGN, Kuala Lumpur-KUL, Manila-MNL and Singapore-SIN.
Covid 19 Response
During the very difficult Covid 19 Pandemic, in the face of precipitous drops in air travel and myriad travel-related restrictions, JambiJet spent most of 2020 reducing flights but managed to not entirely eliminate any of its domestic routes. However, the company was forced to drop all of its international routes due to the more complicated entry requirements other countries imposed on foreign carriers.
Still, Ms Angkasa and the head office at Jambi-DJB was able to figure out how to largely avoid layoffs by repurposing many of JambiJet’s aircraft into preighters that could carry supplies and equipment at the request of the Indonesian government and major national industries. JambiJet received a great deal of help by having its preighter aircraft do work for PT Angkasa Pacific, the industrial conglomerate owned by Ms Angkasa’s father Santoso Angkasa, expediting delivery of important supplies and equipment ferrying its employees safely between cities.
Recent Fleet Management
JambiJet first began to take delivery of several Airbus A320neo aircraft in 2020. First ordered in 2017 as replacements for the company’s older Airbus A320-200s, the delivery schedule was slowed down significantly due to the pandemic and its impacts on supply chains and so forth, but the process of receiving them continues, although the schedule of removing the A320-200s has been stretched out a bit to ensure proper network coverage.
JambiJet received its first Aria T102 Transonic jet in October 2023, its first ever non-Airbus aircraft. Ordered in 2018, JambiJet has plans to use the T102 on thinner routes both domestically and internationally, especially for expansion to more destinations from its Jambi-DJB hub, while also setting up some point-to-point routes within Indonesia.
JambiJet is awaiting delivery of its first Aria T202 Transonic and Aria T152 Transonic airliners starting in the latter half of 2024. The T202s will allow the airline to reach into western Asia to connect with new cities like Dubai-DXB and Jeddah-JED, as well as select destinations in India, Pakistan, Maldives and more. The carrier is also planning to continue expanding air service within Southeast Asia, including destinations such as Cebu-CEB, Phú Quốc-PQC, Phuket-HKT, and a few cities within Malaysia beyond Kuala Lumpur-KUL.
Plans are also in place to open a 4th hub at Denpasar-DPS, which will offer air service to holidaymakers in Australia and New Zealand.
Although JambiJet hasn’t announced plans to officially become an all-Aria carrier, such plans are probably in the cards. The company had originally stated that it wanted to retire its remaining Airbus A320-200s by 2024, but has since postponed that milestone to 2026, after which the carrier could then begin to gradually offload at least part of its fleet of A320neos.
Destinations
JambiJet offers routes connecting to the following cities. All destinations listed are located within Indonesia except where otherwise noted.
Ambon-AMQ
Banda Aceh-BTJ
Bandar Lampung-TKG
Bandung-BDO
Bangkok-BKK, Thailand
Batam-BTH
Belitung-TJQ
Bengkulu-BKS
Biak-BIK
Darwin-DRW, Australia
Denpasar-DPS
Ho Chi Minh City-SGN, Vietnam
Jakarta-CGK - Hub [Map Link]
Jambi-DJB - HQ and Hub [Map Link]
Kuala Lumpur-KUL, Malaysia
Langgur-LUV
Lombok/Praya-LOP
Makassar-UPG
Manado-MDC
Manila-MNL, Philippines
Manokwari-MKW
Merauke-MKQ
Nabire-NBX
Padang-PDG
Palembang-PLM
Palu-PLW
Pekanbaru-PKU
Pontianak-PNK
Singapore-SIN, Singapore
Surabaya-SUB - Hub [Map Link]
Tahuna-NAH
Taraken-TRK
Ternate-TTE
Timika-TIM
Wamena-WMX
Fleet
Current Fleet
JambiJet’s fleet currently includes the following aircraft.
Airbus A320-200 - 2013-Present - Retiring 2026
Airbus A320neo - 2017-Present
Aria T102 Transonic - 2023-Present
Future Fleet
JambiJet has placed firm orders for the following aircraft, and are expecting to begin taking deliveries of them in the near future.
Aria T152 Transonic - expected late 2024
Aria T202 Transonic - expected early 2025
=Nota Bene=
JambiJet never existed in real life, and was not particularly inspired by any one Indonesian carrier.
There is an airline in Kenya named JamboJet operating in Kenya. JambiJet is not related.
There is a Batik Air based in Indonesia that coincidentally uses Batik patterns on their aircraft. JambiJet is not related. I wanted to create a completely independent carrier instead of a subsidiary like Batik Air, which is a subsidiary of Lion Air Group. So I created JambiJet from scratch.
The character Budiwati Angkasa isn’t based on any real life person. Her first name means “wise one” in Bahasa Indonesia, while her surname means “sky.” Everything else about her is fictitious, including her appearance, which was randomly generated.
About Batik… you can read more about it here, but long story short, Batik is made either by drawing dots and lines of wax with a spouted tool called a canting, or by printing the wax with a copper stamp called a cap. The applied wax resists dyes and therefore allows the artisan to colour selectively by soaking the cloth in one color, removing the wax with boiling water, and repeating as needed if multiple colors are desired.
I’ve been aware of Batik as a fashion item since the 1990s, following a visit to a Batik factory in the Caribbean while on vacation there.
I discovered Batik Air’s usage of Batik on its aircraft only recently, after I had already created JambiJet. My decision to use Batik patterns on JambiJet’s tails was actually inspired by some of the tail patterns painted on JetBlue aircraft, which are also designed for each individual aircraft. I was surprised to find that apparently Batik Air only uses a persistent set of 2-3 Batik patterns across their fleet, which look cool btw. But for JambiJet I wanted more colorful and variable patterns; hopefully I’ve achieved that.
Lastly, I have to confess that I didn’t know there was an actual place in Indonesia named Jambi - which is both a city and a province there - until about a year ago. I accidentally discovered this while doing a Google search for a song named “Jambi” by the US rock band Tool. The song is a track on their 4th studio album, 10,000 Days. Oddly enough, the song’s title has nothing to do with Indonesia at all - the title was inspired by a genie character named Jambi from the popular American TV series Pee-wee's Playhouse.
I decided to base the airline in Jambi even though it is only the 25th largest city in Indonesia. I reasoned that if Boston can be the 25th largest US city and still have 3 airline hubs (Delta Air Lines, JetBlue and Cape Air), then so could Jambi, which also has roughly the same population as Boston. I should add, though that in real life Jambi’s airport isn’t very big; only 6 airlines serve it, and almost all of them fly only to Jakarta-CGK. Someone like Ms Angkasa would see this as an opportunity for sure. 😊