Synopsis: Sayap Samudra (The Wings of Ocean)
In a classroom in Yogyakarta in 1982, Kartika felt suffocated by the confines of the walls and the rigid, rote learning curriculum. Refusing to accept a future dictated by a piece of paper, this young girl with curly hair took a bold, extreme step: she took off her school uniform and returned to her hometown on the coast of Pangandaran. She faced her parents’ fierce opposition with unwavering determination, relying on a pair of gold earrings a family heirloom that she willingly parted with to buy her own freedom at the pier.
Life in the real world proved brutal. As a young woman at the Fish Auction Market (TPI), Kartika had to contend with unscrupulous middlemen, the ferocity of western storms, and the bitter reality of her logistics truck breaking down on the rugged mountain roads of West Java leaving her entire investment to rot before it even reached the capital. From that failure, her bold vision was born: the nation’s seafood harvest must not perish on land it must fly through the air.
Though ridiculed and rejected for years by banks, her business conviction never wavered until she successfully secured her first aircraft. When the tsunami devastated Aceh in late 2004, her small plane broke through the isolation caused by the disaster to deliver humanitarian aid, paving the way for the birth of the regional airline Susi Air, which serves Indonesia’s outermost islands. From a scorned coastal fish vendor to standing proudly at the State Palace.
