Bali to operate its own airline as others slash flights

Bali to operate its own airline as others slash flights

Agencies, Perth/Frankfurt/Bangkok

Bali's first international airline, which postponed its maiden flight because of last month's deadly terrorist bombing, now plans to take to the skies in February, the company said Monday.

Air Paradise International had planned to fly the four-hour flight between Bali and the Western Australian state capital Perth on Oct. 27, Associated Press reported on Monday.

The service was canceled after bombs exploded in a nightclub district packed with foreign tourists at Bali's Kuta Beach on Oct. 12, killing nearly 200 people, including almost 90 Australians.

Air Paradise national business manager Gary Hilt said the airline now expected to begin services Feb. 16, but would confirm the date just before Christmas, subject to government travel warnings.

Australia has warned its citizens not to travel to Indonesia because of the potential for further terrorist attacks. Owned by a prominent Bali businessman, Kadek Wiranatha, Air Paradise plans to run four flights a week to Perth and three to the southern city of Melbourne.

Major airlines, such as Australia's Qantas, and Singapore Airlines have slashed flights to Bali following the bombing as tourist numbers plunged.

The attack has affected tourism throughout Indonesia, causing the government to revise its expected economic growth rate to 4 percent, instead of 5 percent over the next year.

The Australian airline Qantas has scrapped several of its Indonesian flights as thousands of tourists seek alternatives to Bali. It is redirecting Indonesian capacity to more popular holiday destinations both inside Australia and elsewhere - Fiji, for example.

The airline has cut back services from Darwin to Denpasar to one a week following the bombings. It is cutting its Sydney- Denpasar services from four to two return flights a week.

Qantas is from December 1 increasing the number of flights from Singapore to Darwin, in the far north of Australia, from three to four per week, the airline told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) in Frankfurt.

The changes come as Singapore Airlines (SIA) said it was cutting flights from Singapore to Denpasar, Bali, to four a day. Some tour operators are offering discounts of up to 40 percent on holidays to Bali in an effort to attract tourists.

Australian Minister for Tourism Chris Burns welcomed Qantas' decision to increase flights between Darwin and Singapore.

Burns said it was estimated that the Northern Territory, of which Darwin is the capital, has been losing 35,000 tourists a year because of the lack of flights.

Meanwhile Thai Hotels Association reported that the fallout from the October 12 bomb explosions on the Bali island has resulted in the cancellation of reservations for 32,000 hotel room nights in Thailand, costing the local industry at least 120 million baht (US$2.8 million).

The Association's secretary Prakit Chinamornpong was quoted by The Nation newspaper as saying 30 Thai hotels had reported large- scale cancellations since the deadly attacks.

But he said many others had reported no impact or even an increase in guests as tourists switched destinations from Indonesia to Thailand.

Before the attacks, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) had predicted tourist arrivals would reach 10.5 million this year, a 6 percent increase over 2001.

Last year, despite an aviation industry slow-down triggered by the September 11 attacks on the United States, the number of tourists coming to Thailand grew by a healthy annual rate of 6 per cent.

The TAT said tourist arrivals grew at about the same 6 per cent level during the first seven months of this year.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and other Thai leaders have issued repeated assurances that Thailand is not a terrorist target and ordered stepped-up security, particularly on the southern resort island of Phuket.

John Koldowski, managing direct of the Pacific Asia Travel Association's Bangkok-based Strategic Intelligence Center, said he was concerned that a general "hysteria" could set in, spoiling the climate for tourism throughout the region.

"There's all sorts of advice about intelligence that Phuket could be under threat, but we've seen nothing that would validate that," Koldowski told DPA. "I think there's a jittery reaction, given that none of us have seen any concrete evidence."

"There's a very real danger of moving into some kind of hysteria, where every little bang you hear, everyone jumps," he added. "That's a self-perpetuating negative spirit. We don't need it."