Garuda Indonesia Logo

About Garuda Indonesia

Garuda Indonesia is the national flag carrier of Indonesia, based at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport near Jakarta. The airline traces its history to Indonesian Airways in January 1949; it flew as Garuda Indonesian Airways from 28 December 1949 and was set up in 1950 as a joint venture of the Indonesian government and KLM, whose shares the government bought out in 1954.

Garuda flies a long-haul fleet of Airbus A330 and Boeing 777-300ER aircraft alongside Boeing 737 jets, with Jakarta as its main hub and Denpasar and Makassar as secondary hubs. It joined the SkyTeam alliance on 5 March 2014 and has been listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange since 2011.

The Garuda Indonesia Logo: Design and Meaning

The name comes from Garuda, the mythical bird that carries Vishnu, a name suggested by President Sukarno. The current identity goes back to a 1985 redesign by Landor Associates, which shortened the name to "Garuda Indonesia" and drew the bird as a flowing symbol of curved strokes forming its wings, in shades of blue and aqua meant to recall Indonesia's seas and tropical landscape seen from the air.

In 2009, as part of the airline's "Quantum Leap" plan, the bird was refined, the wordmark got a custom typeface, and a "nature's wing" graphic inspired by tropical bird feathers and rippling water was introduced for the aircraft tails. The version on this page sets "Garuda Indonesia" in a grey sans-serif with the blue-to-aqua bird rising over the end of the name and the tagline "The Airline of Indonesia" below.