Indonesia has sacked the head of troubled airline Garuda and replaced him with a former finance director in an effort to revitalize the state-owned flag carrier, a government minister said on Thursday.

Emirsyah Satar, vice president director of PT Bank Danamon, will take over as president and chief executive from Indra Setiawan, State Enterprise Minister Sugiharto said in Hong Kong.

The debt-laden airline has been beset by financial woes and a scandal surrounding the death of a prominent human rights activist on a flight to Amsterdam.

"The replacement is badly needed to revitalize Garuda," Sugiharto said.

Satar, who was Garuda's finance director before joining Danamon, said he had accepted the job.

"Last night Sugiharto called me and asked me to take the post. I told him that I need one or two weeks to study Garuda's current situation and then we can determine what we can do," Satar said in Jakarta. "I am ready to leave Danamon."

The airline has came under the spotlight following the death of leading Indonesian human rights activist, Munir, on a Garuda flight in September hours before it landed in Amsterdam. Dutch investigators said he died from arsenic poisoning.

"My decision has no link" to that incident, Sugiharto said.