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n a bid to strengthen the country’s network and develop regional economic growth, the Transportation Ministry is offering 130 new commercial air routes, almost 60 percent of which will serve eastern parts of Indonesia.

Ministry spokesman Bambang S. Ervan said the air transportation directorate general had promoted the new routes to domestic carriers that provided scheduled flight services.

The government is currently awaiting a response to the offer.

“We want to better connect places across the country by offering new routes to airlines and so far we’ve received a positive commitment from Sky Aviation, which is going to link Jayapura [Papua] and Sorong [West Papua] shortly,” Bambang said in Jakarta on Monday.

A fast growing carrier, Sky Aviation plans to fly its first Russian Sukhoi Superjet 100 airplane in February to serve the Papuan route. The carrier will operate 12 sub-100 jets by 2015.

“The rapid growth in the number of airline passengers should be followed with [the opening of] more routes connecting parts of Indonesia, not only those in the west [parts of Indonesia] and big cities,” he said.

Indonesia has seen an average 15 percent growth in airline passengers in the past few years after a strong economic performance, with a 16.78 percent increase to 68.19 million passengers at the end of 2011.

Besides Jayapura–Sorong, the ministry is also offering routes including Ambon–Jayapura, Ambon–Manado, Balikpapan–Medan, Balikpapan–Palembang, Bandung–Pontianak, Biak–Manado, Buol–Makassar, Gorontalo–Jayapura, Kupang–Manado, Makassar–Surakarta and Yogyakarta–Sorong.

The routes are expected to help boost Indonesia’s tourism sector.

In addition, he said that the new routes were aimed at reducing transits at crowded airports such as the country’s main gateway — Soekarno-Hatta International Airport — in Cengkareng, Banten, just west of Jakarta, and Juanda International Airport in Surabaya, East Java, creating more efficient trips.

“We have to reduce the burden on those big airports. Thus, we are creating alternative routes where the airplanes can directly connect to two cities without having to stopover,” he went on.

Contacted separately, Sriwijaya Air senior corporate communications manager Agus Soedjono said that the airline would study the potential routes being offered. As long as the routes were commercially viable, the company would provide the services.

“As an aviation company, we have our own network plan that’s in line with the company’s fleet expansion plan. But we are flexible; route choices offered by the government will be studied and we can open commercially viable ones when we are ready,” Agus told The Jakarta Post over the phone.

He said that the airline planned to strengthen its domestic network in eastern parts of Indonesia this year and had submitted its flight plan to the ministry at the end of 2012.

“We are waiting for approval,” he said, adding that Sriwijaya currently flew to Ambon, Biak, Jayapura, Mamuju and Manokwari from Jakarta and that it had recently increased its Jakarta–Jayapura route to three flights from one flight a day.