Airplane passenger volume to grow 25%

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Ministry of Communications has predicted that the number of air passengers in the country will increase by 25 percent next year on the back of cheaper airfares and rising public confidence in the local airline industry.

"After surpassing the 15 million figure this year, a jump of 30 percent over last year's figure, we predict the number of domestic passengers will still increase by 25 percent (in 2004)," said Cucuk Suryo Suprojo, the director general of air transportation at the ministry, was quoted by Antara as saying on Wednesday.

He explained that the number of domestic air passengers was projected to reach 20 million.

He said that this level of growth would be capable of being accommodated via a combination of new airlines entering the market and allowing existing airlines to increase their flight frequencies on certain busy routes.

Cucuk said that the country may need around 40 new aircraft to accommodate the rising number of air passengers.

"That number of air passengers (20 million) can be served by around 240 aircraft," he said, adding that currently around 200 aircraft served domestic routes.

But he acknowledged that the number of additional aircraft required might not be as big, especially if existing airline operators could boost efficiency and increase their aircraft utilization rates.

"For instance, one aircraft could be flown for 10 hours per day instead of the usual eight hours," he said.

Over the past two years, more people in the country were flying by air as ticket prices have significantly declined following the entry into the market of new airline operators, particularly the no-frills airlines.

Some airlines were even able to cut air fares by up to 75 percent.

The number of air passengers reached 12.8 million people in 1997, but dropped to 6.3 million in 2000 following the regional economic crisis. It rebounded again in 2001 with passenger volume reaching 9.1 million, and increased again to 12.3 million last year.

Elsewhere Cucuk also said that the government would push local airline operators to expand their operations to other countries in the region

He did not provide details.