Jakarta airport to expand passenger capacity

Jakarta airport to expand passenger capacity

JAKARTA (JP): The government is planning to expand the
passenger capacity of Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International
Airport by 150 percent to reach 55 million passengers a year by
2018, Minister of Transportation Haryanto Dhanutirto said.

Haryanto said the expansion is in anticipation of the
increasing number of travelers in the near future.

Similar expansion projects, he said, are also being carried
out by neighboring Changi airport in Singapore, which will
increase its passenger capacity to 40 million a year, and
Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur airport, which expects to be able to
accommodate 20 million passengers a year. He gave no further
details.

Currently, the Soekarno-Hatta airport can accommodate up to 20
million passengers a year.

"To support our tourism industry, I have asked a number of
foreign air carriers, including Air France, British Airways, KLM
of the Netherlands and Japan Airlines, to increase their flights
to Indonesia," Haryanto said over the weekend, reported Antara.

An open-sky policy has also been applied for the regional
economic growth of Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-the Philippines, he
added.

Domestic shipping operators and air carriers have also been
asked to start serving routes to eastern Europe, Africa and Latin
America, all of which promise great potential for trade with
Indonesia but lack transportation services connecting them with
Indonesia, he said.

"We have been encouraging Garuda to operate flights to
Johannesburg, South Africa, because flights to that destination,
which are served by Singapore Airlines and Malaysia's MAS, are
always full," Haryanto said.

According to earlier reports, Garuda is conducting studies
before deciding whether it will serve the Johannesburg and Buenos
Aires routes.

Since early this year, the government has repeatedly announced
its plans to expand several airports. These include the
development of Adisumarmo airport in Surakarta, Central Java, and
Polonia airport in Medan, North Sumatra.

The first phase of the Adisumarmo airport expansion is being
carried out by the government in cooperation with PT Yala Perkasa
Internasional, a subsidiary of PT Citra Lamtoro Gung Persada,
which is run by President Soeharto's eldest daughter, Siti
Hardiyanti Rukmana.

Dutch and German firms have reportedly expressed interest in
participating in the upgrading of Polonia airport. (pwn)