MI 153 JOG-SIN Sunday 12 Aug 2018

Plane: B738

There are two daily flights between Yogyakarta (JOG) and Singapore, one on AirAsia and the other on Silkair. The Airasia flight leaves JOG really early, at 7.35am, leaving you with the last day of your trip wasted as basically you are just waking up to catch your flight. From Mondays to Saturdays, the Silkair timing is only slightly better as it leaves at 10.15am. However, for the Sunday flight, it is a much better option because the flight departs at 6pm, leaving you with almost the whole day to visit some new place in JOG or to do your last minute shopping.

We were lucky to get a good deal on the Silkair flight MI153 after our long weekend in JOG. The Adisutjipto International Airport is about half an hour away from the city, easily accessible by taxi or Grab car. We left our hotel slightly late because we were waiting for the motorbike rental people to come and collect the bike, as well as to return my identity card. It was close to 5pm when we reached the airport and quickly rushed over to the check-in counter. We were the last passengers to check in and the staff told us that they had called my mum as it was placed as the emergency contact number. Luckily we had done online check in, so we just checked our luggage and collected the boarding passes. Silkair is generous with the luggage allowance, we had 30kg each, but we only used half of it because we did not buy much stuff, or rather the snacks (chips, cereal, coffee) that we bought were really light.

We headed to immigration where there was no queue and soon we were in the waiting hall, with many other Singaporeans who were waiting to fly home after having spent a good time in Indonesia.

Boarding started around 5.30pm and it was manual boarding. We walked on the tarmac and climbed up using the back staircase to our aircraft. There were other flights around the same time, but JOG airport mainly handles domestic flights, similar to Pekanbaru.

The flight was full because it was the last flight leaving JOG on Sunday and also due to the National Day weekend, so many people took leave to travel. The plane took off 10 minutes late due to a queue on the runway and we headed in a northwest direction towards Singapore.

The meal was served half an hour later into takeoff. There was an option between seafood bee hoon (which the stewardess called it as noodles) and chicken with rice. I chose the former because I had already eaten rice for lunch. The bee hoon was stir fried and a serving of seafood including prawns was dumped on the top. The presentation was nothing to rave about. As for drinks, it was sad that Silkair did not serve any alcoholic drinks, unlike Garuda. I think Garuda still has a better inflight service compared to Silkair. There was also no personal entertainment screen, so I had to watch the common screen which was showing Running man, Just for laughs and other programmes.

Since we were seated at the second last row, the single-aisle cabin had a high traffic to use the toilet after the meal trays were cleared. It was a short two-hour flight and I did not manage to catch any sleep because the cabin lights were not dimmed. Nevertheless, I admired the sunset as we flew across the South China Sea, as the sky turned from a fiery orange to a tinted violet shade.

Around 8.50pm (Singapore time), we landed at Changi Airport and it was back to the daily grind the next day. I saw that the next flight using the same Silkair aircraft would be to Hyderabad, India. There was a 2 hour lead time between the two flights which allowed for the plane to be cleaned up and ready for the next batch of passengers.

I guess this would be my last time flying with Silkair because they are going to merge with the parent company Singapore Airlines as part of rebranding efforts. I would choose Garuda over Silkair due to their better inflight service, but unfortunately Garuda does not fly direct to Yogyakarta and I would need to make a transit in Jakarta.