Airfreight service restriction criticized
JAKARTA (JP): The government's plan to limit international air freighters' services to Batam island in Riau province will make cargo services more costly, an executive said.
Jean-Paul Moreau of Air France Cargo said here yesterday that if the requirement was fully enforced the operational costs would be much higher even though the landing rates at Batam's Hang Nadim Airport were lower.
"It will be costly for any air carriers which have passenger services to Jakarta, for instance, to fly to Batam for the cargo service," he said.
The government plans to close all other Indonesian airports to international cargo jets. The policy will therefore force international cargo jets serving Indonesian destinations to reroute their services to Hang Nadim Airport.
Although the airport offers lower landing fees and cheaper aviation fuel to attract international cargo jets, it is still short of cargo handling and other related equipment.
Moreau said that his company had not received any official notice from the Indonesia government advising it to fly to Batam instead of Jakarta.
The plan was initially introduced to optimize the utilization of Hang Nadim Airport, in which huge amounts have been invested to expand its capacity to handle airplanes of up to 747-400s. Hang Nadim's runway has been extended to more than 4,000 meters, longer than Jakarta's Cengkareng airport's, and its apron can host seven Boeing B-747-400s, three Boeing-737s and three F-28s simultaneously.
Hang Nadim was designed to rival the modernistic Changi Airport in Singapore, which is just some 25 kilometers from Batam. Hang Nadim has been renovated to meet many international standards, but only for passenger services.
Minister of Transportation Haryanto Dhanutirto has frequently said that all foreign cargo planes must land in Batam so that Hang Nadim would become the country's air cargo center.
The minister claims that all international air cargo carriers must load and unload in Hang Nadim and that only domestic air cargo companies may handle domestic cargo storage and distribution. This would protect the country's domestic airlines in air freight services, he said.
But no law has been passed to that effect.
Officials at the Ministry of Transportation and the Directorate General of Air Transportation were unavailable for comment yesterday.
Promising
Moreau said that Indonesia had had a promising air cargo business in recent years.
"Out of some 202,000 tons of cargo transported by Air France within Asia annually, 14,000 tons were from Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta. Cargo from Jakarta accounts for some one- third of the 14,000 tons," he said.
In Asia, Air France Cargo, which owns 12 air freighters, also flies to Japan, Thailand, India, Korea, Taiwan, Shanghai and Hong Kong.
The company currently operates a once a week service linking Paris and Jakarta by Boeing 747-200 cargo jet. In addition, Air France operates A-340 passenger jets daily between Paris and Jakarta.
According to Moreau, his company, the third largest air freighter worldwide after Lufthansa and Korean Air, has signed a cargo cooperation agreement which allows airlines to share cargo capacity.
He said neither the haze from local forest fires or Indonesia's currency turmoil had affected Air France Cargo's business.
"We have been affected in Malaysia and Thailand (due to the the recent plunge in the ringgit's and baht's value) as we use local currencies, but we quote in U.S. dollars in Indonesia," he said.
The haze has affected passenger air services, not cargo services, he said. (icn)