My dad works for them actually ! And i have first hand experiance with the staff directly related to garuda, whenever they come to australia i always take them around to see the sites specially the ones i know, love it when i see them, both pilots and pramugari's and they always speak about these things.
From my observations I think the reason why alot of the employees are leaving is that many of the staff arent taken care of like some of the other airlines. simple example. I was at sukarno hatta couple months back and there was a garuda staff member who had just been to training in jakarta and wanted to go back to surabaya, season was packed because this was basically the beginning of ramadan and obviously everyone wants to visit makam, go back to home town whatever.
He was actually working at the time in jakarta but because of this ID ticket he actually had to wait for an empty seat on the airplane before he could actually get on. How shocking is that, i mean i excepted the fact that i had to wait because i was not on work leave like he was i was on holidays but he was working and he was waiting with me at the airport for almost 4 flights before there was a seat, this was almost a 6 hour wait !
If you look at qantas staff for example, if they are sent to melbourne or sydney to do training, their ticket has the same privlages as a normal passenger and that is the way it should be, because they are sent because of the company so the company should compansate, the company needs them, company should repay them.
Also obviously piolts and the pramugari's get paid alot less at garuda to lets say qantas or singapore airlines and many of them just try to rackup the hours at garuda and leave at the first chance they get. Its because Again Garuda is not taking care of its staff and giving them the deserved attention they should get.
Regarding the service, i remeber once i flew from jakarta - bali right, lots of japanese tourists on the plane, when they speak about the saftey issues or when statments are made they usually say them in english, indonesian and depending on where they are japanese also, i remeber that at this particualr time the japanese spoken was so terrible (mean i dont even speak japanese but noticed from the faces of the tourists) it was shocking.
Garuda should correctly train up the staff to be able to speak well enough to get the message across. Even the english sometimes is very difficult to understand, i mean so many of you guys here speak awesome english, its just a matter of correct funding for the staff but its just not done, and thats seen i guess by people as a lack of service.
The final thing is this kind of thing.
Computers at the garuda office where damaged and old, 486's. Can you believe where still being used, my dad was using one and could hardly get on the internet, and this is whilst all other airline company ground staff are using new PC's.
Eventually garuda decide to upgrade and i make a suggestion as to how to proceed with an upgrade in the most effective way, i dont even work for them but i just wanted to help.
I come back a few weeks later and all the computers are replaced, i was like kool , but i wanted to know if they got a good deal, what i found out was that the computers where on lease and it was like a 4-5 year contract, so they are bound to it, service/ replacment parts everything from the company they are leasing from. After i asked the cost i found out that after a year of renting, they could have owned the computers if they had bought it using the suggestion that i gave them.
After i heard i just hung my head and thought, OK bad choice but if thats there decision then thats their decision ... BUT what got me most annoyed is the fact that the computers where being leased from a company, who's owner BTW is the financial manager of Garuda's friend ! and get this, he's not even indonesian

, i guess though dia tau sifat kita ya, jadi tau kalo mau mainin kita to gimmana.
I can almost be certain that some of the other managers where given a cut just so they could accept this contract !! But its these kinds of moves that are made that is costing not just garuda but indonesia as a whole.
I mean if the money was spent wisley maybe on training up staff, giving staff the deserved recognition they should get when the company sends them of to work elsewhere then all the problems would just fix themselves cause everyone will be happy, our top pilots wont be looking for opportunities elsewhere, we would be able to communicate with our customers better etc, it would be just better as a whole.
And about sales, dont even go there, i know couple of tour and travel companys that are just sick and tired of dealing with some garuda and now even though people want to fly to indonesia, these tours and travels company want to bypass all the crap and now just suggest their clients fly singapore and malaysia.
when i go to indo i see even more Lion airway checkin stations now, pretty soon its gonna be all lion checkin's and its going to be sad when that happens.