Garuda Indonesia Colombo, Bombay, and Prague. Rome and Paris became the airline's third and fourth European destinations, with flights stopping in Bombay and Cairo to refuel. Flights to the People's Republic of China began that same year, with service to Canton via Phnom Penh, the first Indonesian airline to do so. During the early 1970s, Garuda Indonesia took delivery of both the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 and Fokker F28 Fellowship for its short and medium-haul operations. The airline went on to take delivery of 62 F28s, holding the title for the largest operator of the F28 in the world. In 1976, the airline
Garuda Indonesia Citilink, which provided low-cost flights to multiple Indonesian destinations and was spun-off in 2012. The earliest predecessor to Garuda Indonesia was KNILM, Royal Dutch Indies Airways, founded in 1928 during the Dutch colonial period; despite the similar name, it was not a subsidiary of the main Dutch carrier KLM. KNILM was dissolved in 1947, and its assets were transferred to a new KLM subsidiary, KLM Interinsulair Bedrijf (KLM Interinsular Service), which was nationalized in December 1949. The name "Garuda" was derived from a Dutch poem written by a renowned Javanese scholar and poet Raden Mas Noto Soeroto; ""Ik ben Garuda,