SIA expects up to 8% growth in Indonesia
SIA expects up to 8% growth in Indonesia
Debbie A. Lubis, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Singapore Airlines expects the number of its passengers flying
to and from Indonesia to grow between five and eight percent this
year on the condition that Indonesia's economy improved, and that
travelers regained confidence in the airline industry.
"We are hopeful that things are improving and people return to
travel. But of course, it depends on the economic situation of
the country," Raja Segran, general manager of Singapore Airlines
in Indonesia told The Jakarta Post.
He was speaking at the launching of the TravelSmart-Asia
campaign by Abacus International. The campaign is aimed at
reviving the public's confidence in the safety of air travel.
Although flying is by far the safest form of modern transport,
public confidence in air travel was severely hurt following the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers in
New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC.
Following the attacks, Singapore Airlines cut its flights on
the Denpasar-Singapore route to 24 flights a week, down from 28
flights a week, while the Surabaya-Singapore service was reduced
to seven flights a week from 12 flights.
Segran said that the airline would return the number of
flights on the Singapore-Denpasar route back to 28 a week within
the next few weeks.
"But we have no intention of increasing the capacity (in the
Surabaya route) in the immediate future because we do not see the
traffic coming back yet," Segran said.
The airline had no intention of adding flights to the Jakarta-
Singapore route, on which the company also cut flights, down to
seven from eight in July of last year.
Nevertheless, as part of a bid to improve service on the
Jakarta-Singapore route, airline officials said that they would
upgrade their planes on that route by the end of the month.
"We will remove and replace the Airbus 310s with bigger
aircraft like Airbus 340s and 747s for the Jakarta-Singapore
route," Segran said.
Today, people prefer traveling short-haul rather than long-
haul flights, he said, adding that Asian flights to Europe and
the U.S. remained weak, while regional flights in Southeast Asia,
Australia and New Zealand were strong.
Abacus International's president and chief executive officer
(CEO) Don Birch agreed that the Sept. 11 attacks had heavily
impacted public confidence in air travel.
But he added that he believed the public would regain its
confidence in flying if they were provided with comprehensive
information on air travel.
Providing such information was the main objective of the
TravelSmart Asia campaign, he said.