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)