Letters: No way out of Sumba

Sat, 06/13/2009 1:17 PM  |  Reader's Forum

A 4,000 kilometers journey through the archipelago was supposed to take almost three weeks. Our purpose is to make footage for a documentary film about the collapsing infrastructure of this fourth most populous country on earth.

Due to the limited time and great distance that had to be covered, my team and myself were avoiding flying to the outer islands. While on paper a flight on a number of airlines could take 40 minutes or one hour, in reality a passenger could waste more than a week due to cancellations, inefficiency, indifference or simple cynicism of local staff.

But one place we had to visit was Sumba island. We chose one of the airlines as it offered a less than one-hour daily flight from Denpasar, Bali to Tambolaka in Sumba. The airline is boasting its plans to improve service, upgrade its fleet and raise its service to international standards. We decided to take it upon its word.

We checked-out at 11a.m. from Hotel Harris in Tuban, five minutes from Denpasar Airport, locked our car, left most of the luggage in the hotel and hitched the shuttle to the domestic terminal ready to catch the 12:45 flight to Tamboaka. Five dollars per person got us to the beat up and old-fashioned "business" lounge with dirty windows, uninspiring food and no Internet connection.

At 1 p.m., there was no boarding announcement. One hour later the loudspeakers announced that the boarding for Tamboaka was postponed until 3:30 p.m. "due to the late arrival of the aircraft." One plane landed around 4 p.m., but just a few minutes later the announcement informed desperate passengers that the flight had been canceled.

Then, passengers were herded to the buses that felt like an oven to a hotel. In the morning, the airline was transferring passengers to the flight of other airline. Screaming and confusion continued for almost one hour. The flight was also more than one hour late, but nobody seemed to care. We eventually boarded an ancient Fokker-28. It took off and 48 minutes later landed on the uneven runway of Tambolaka.

Next day at 7 a.m. more than one hour before the departure of our flight with the first airline back to Denpasar, we arrived at Tambolaka airport. But the airport was empty. A gardener was cutting grass; two local passengers were sitting on the curb, hopeless expressions on their faces.

Eventually the airport officials began to crawl in, only to inform us that they had nothing to do with the airlines. They couldn't answer the question as to why the airport was not informed about the cancellation of the flights, there was nobody at the control tower since early in the morning when the plane was supposed to arrive.

After 12 o'clock all airlines canceled their flights, to Bali, Flores, even to West Timor. No additional flights were added until Monday. There were no seats available until Wednesday. It was Sunday. The airline's agents stayed at home. No food or beverages, not even water was given. No lodging was offered.

It took dozens of phone calls to members of the Indonesian government, to our travel agent in Jakarta, before one single phone call changed everything: The airline decided to back off from its threat to suspend all its flights to Sumba. It was all a bluff. Tomorrow morning, we were informed, the plane from Kupang will land at Tambolaka and take us back to Bali. And it really happened. The plane arrived and departed only several minutes late.

Our ordeal ended. But I wondered: after 15 years of working in Indonesia, I - a war correspondent covering conflicts all over the world - felt helpless and desperate just a few hours ago, going through the ordeal so common in today's Indonesia.

Andre Vltchek
Denpasar

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