Most airports in Indonesia inadequate, expert says

JAKARTA (JP): An airline executive warned yesterday that most airports in Indonesia lack adequate facilities, possibly putting airliners, and passengers, in peril.

The president of the national air carrier Garuda Indonesia, Wage Mulyono, told Commission V of the House of Representatives here yesterday that most airports in the country have very poor infrastructures and facilities.

"Navigation systems at all airports, except in Jakarta, are outdated. The airports also lack high-powered, high frequency long distance communications devices," he said, all of which are critical.

Wage also said that the lighting and sign posting on several runways was substandard.

"For example, part of the runway at the airport in Jayapura, Irian Jaya, is damaged," he told the commission in charge of transportation, public workings, tourism and telecommunications.

Wage also pointed out that signals at Soekarno-Hatta international airport in Jakarta are too small to be seen from cockpits, while many lights on the taxi ways are burned out.

The Ngurah Rai airport in Denpasar, Bali, has a very limited aircraft parking lot, forcing the jets to drop passengers off at rather remote, and sometimes unsafe, places.

Indonesia currently operates 70 airports, 19 of which are international gateways, including those in Jakarta, Surabaya, Bali, Batam, Manado and Medan.

Chairman of the Board of Meteorology and Geophysics, Karjoto, said recently that only eight airports in Indonesia are equipped with weather radar: Polonia airport in Medan, the Hasanudin airport in Ujungpandang, the Sultan Mahmud Bahrudin airport in Palembang, South Sumatra, the Soekarno-Hatta airport in Jakarta, the Ngurah Rai airport in Bali, the El Tari in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, Kaisepo in Biak, Irian Jaya and Achmad Yani in Semarang, Central Java.

And of the eight equipped, only three, Polonia, Ngurah Rai and Hasanudin, have functioning radars.(icn)