New airlines may lose licenses in 12 months if...
New airlines may lose licenses in 12 months if...
JAKARTA (JP): New airline companies will lose their licenses
if they do not operate within 12 months after the issuance of
their permits, a senior aviation official said on Wednesday.
Director General of Air Transportation at the Communications
Ministry, Soenaryo Yosopratomo, said that three of seven new
airline companies licensed in June had yet to operate.
The three inoperative scheduled airline operators included PT
Indonesian Airlines Avia Patria, PT Airmark Indonesia, and PT
Rusmindo Internusa Air, he said.
"Avia Patria will begin operations in December, while Airmark
and Internusa are operating unscheduled flights," Soenaryo told a
hearing with the House Commission IV for infrastructure and
transportation affairs.
He said that Airmark and Internusa, which operated unscheduled
flights before applying to become a scheduled air carrier, should
operate their scheduled flights within 12 months or their
licenses will be forfeit.
The three airlines are part of seven air carriers licensed in
June to operate scheduled flight services. Four of them -- PT
Bayu Indonesia Air, PT Awair Internasional, PT Lion Mentari
Airlines, PT Pelita Air Service -- have started operations.
He said of 45 companies licensed for unscheduled flights, 21
are operational and of the 44 licensed non-commercial flight
companies, 30 are operational.
The entrance of the new airlines has caused tough price
competition among the companies serving domestic routes,
especially on the Jakarta-Pontianak, Jakarta-Surabaya, Jakarta-
Medan, Jakarta-Makassar, and Jakarta-Balikpapan routes, Soenaryo
said.
"Airlines were competing by giving discounts of around 15
percent to 45 percent under the price set by INACA," he said,
referring to the Indonesian Air Carriers Association that has the
right to set the price for airline tickets.
INACA, with acknowledgements from the Minister of
Transportation and Communications, Agum Gumelar, and the House,
has set a limit to the price operators can charge so that they
would not underprice their tickets and undermine the industry.
INACA chairman Wahyu Hidayat said that ticket prices had to
conform to exchange rates of between Rp 4,000 ($0.44) and Rp
7,500 per dollar.
"So, the price of an airline ticket to Surabaya from Jakarta
would range between Rp 375,000 ($41.6) to Rp 670,000," he said,
adding that every operator was required to publish their prices
to the public to ensure fairness of competition. (tnt)