Ansett plans Sydney-Jakarta flight

JAKARTA (JP): Ansett Australia had applied for permission to fly to Jakarta four times a week as a part of its international expansion program, an executive said yesterday.

"We plan to operate our non-stop services between Sydney and Jakarta from March 1996 and the airline will use a Boeing 767-300 aircraft in an international configuration," said the airline's manager for Indonesia, Ron Brown.

The flight to Jakarta is intended for business travelers, in recognition of the rapid development of the economic relationship between the two countries, he said.

Brown did not say whether the Indonesian government had approved the airline's application.

"In the medium term, we hope that Ansett will fly between the two cities daily. For the next two years we will concentrate on establishing our representative office in Jakarta, before thinking about other destinations in Indonesia," Brown said.

Ansett began its international service with five flights a week to Denpasar, Bali, in September 1993. It has now increased that service to a daily flight to the Balinese capital.

"Indonesia is the sixth-most-popular destination country for Australians and will be a country where Ansett Australia flies to more than one destination," Brown said.

Besides Indonesia, Ansett flies to Hong Kong and Osaka and will commence flights to Kuala Lumpur and Taipei in November.

In addition, Ansett has gained the right to fly to Singapore and Seoul and between a number of cities in Australia and New Zealand

"Promotion has increased Australians' interest in Indonesia, Bali in particular, and resulted in passenger growth rates of 17.7 percent in 1993 and 21.7 percent in 1994," Brown added.

In 1994, 733,939 people traveled between Australia and Indonesia.

Greig McAllen of the Australia Tourist Commission said that the number of Indonesians traveling to Australia is expected to increase by 40 percent this year, to about 125,000 people.

The number is likely to reach 500,000 by the year 2000, he said.

Ansett, with a fleet of 80 jet aircraft, currently has the third-largest market share of the seven airlines flying between Indonesia and Australia. (31)