Indonesia Develops 16 Priority Destinations

Anticipating the large increase in domestic and outbound passengers from and to Jakarta during next month’s Ied holidays, the Ministry of Transportation has approved a large number of extra flights for the period covering one week prior to and one week after the end of Ramadhan, said Bambang S. Ervan, spokesperosn for the Ministry.

With Ied’l Fitri or Lebaran expected to fall on 19 August 2012, this means that extra flights will operate between 12th. to 26th. August.

Extra flights approved are 38 flights for Garuda Indonesia, 20 Singapore Airlines, 6 Cathay Pacific, 2 Korean Airlines and 2 Qantas extra flights, reports Bisnis Indonesia.

However, since prime slot times at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta international airport are already full, extra flights will be operated only at night between 9.0 pm to 5.0 am next morning.

At present four Indonesian airports already operate 24 hours, they are the Soekarno-Hatta International airport of Jakarta, Ngurah Rai airport in Bali, Polonia airport in Medan, and the Hasanudding airport in Makassar.

Other airports asked to operate until midnight to receive extra flights are the airports of Palembang, Pekanbaru, Pontianak, Padang and Bandung.

The extension of airport operating hours must, nonetheless, be supported by local governments, to ensure that transportation will continue to be available between airports and the city to serve incoming and outgoing passengers.