THE Indonesian government will open Jakarta’s second airport to scheduled passenger flights and relocate a number of commercial operations there in a bid to ease congestion at the city’s main airport.
Minister of transportation, Evert Ernest Mangindaan, said a number of airlines, such as Garuda Indonesia, Citilink, Mandala, Lion Air, Batik Air and Indonesia AirAsia, have submitted requests to run services from Halim Perdanakusuma Airport in East Jakarta.
He said: “With 74 flights (movements) per hour, Soekarno-Hatta International Airport is overcrowded at the moment. This means (an average of) one flight per 40 seconds although normal operations would see between 35 flight to 40 flights per hour.
“We therefore plan to open Halim Perdanakusuma Airport and move a number of flights there probably in early 2014.”
Halim Perdanakusuma currently serves military, presidential and private or chartered airlines.
Mangindaan also explained that moving flights to the second airport would enable airport operator Angkasa Pura II to speed up the ongoing apron and runway development at Soekarno-Hatta’s Terminal 3, which is scheduled to open between April and May next year.
In the meantime, minister of state-owned enterprise, Dahlan Iskan, who oversees Indonesian airport authorities, said Angkasa Pura I and II would be extending operating hours of airports outside Jakarta to 24 hours.
