Published on : Wednesday, January 23, 2019
Airport operator PT Angkasa Pura II recorded that from Jan. 1 to 21 a total of 433 flights were canceled by airlines. Lion Air canceled 138 flights (71 outgoing, 67 incoming), flagship carrier Garuda Indonesia canceled 129 (64 outgoing, 65 incoming) and Sriwijaya Air canceled 69.
Citilink cancelled 56, Batik Air 38, Jetstar two and Malindo Air cancelled one flight.
The executive general manager of Sultan Syarif Kasim II Airport, Jaya Tahoma Sirait, said that out of the 433, 429 were regular domestic flights, with 212 incoming and 217 outgoing. Most of the canceled flights, 245, were to have gone from Pekanbaru to Jakarta. Ninety-four flights were canceled from Pekanbaru to Batam in Riau Islands, Jaya said on Tuesday.
Some Pekanbaru-Jambi, Pekanbaru-Singapore and Pekanbaru-Jeddah flights were also cancelled.
Jaya said the flights were canceled because only a few people bought tickets because of their high prices. A Pekanbaru-to-Jakarta ticket, for example, soared from about RP 600,000 to between Rp 1 million and RP 1.3 million.
Jaya said there was a 18.32 percent decrease in passengers and a 24.2 percent decrease in flights at the airport this month compared to in the same period last year. On average, we have seen 20 cancelations per day this month. Usually, the airport managed 92 to 96 flights per day and 86 in the low season, but Jaya said that lately the figure did not even reach that of the low season.
He said he is worried that the activity in the airport would continue to decrease if the domestic ticket fares do not go down. This, he said, would affect the AP II’s plan to expand Sultan Syarif Kasim II Airport.
The airport aimed for 4.3 million to 4.4 million people to use its facilities annually.