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omestic airlines have arranged 74,619 additional seats, with many of those serving eastern Indonesia, to prepare for a rise in air passengers ahead of the year-end holidays.

The Transportation Ministry has approved requests from four airlines, namely state-owned Garuda Indonesia, Garuda subsidiary budget carrier Citilink, privately owned national carrier Sriwijaya Air and NAM Air, to allocate additional seats for the upcoming peak season.

The additional seats will be available for 240 flights from Dec. 22, 2014 to Jan. 2, 2015, meaning that there will be 18 additional flights per day during the holiday season.

Transportation Ministry spokesperson Julius Andravida Barata said all four airlines had requested additional flights serving 12 routes, mainly to several cities across the country.

'€œCitilink and Siwijaya requested additional flights for their Jakarta-Yogyakarta and Jakarta-Medan routes,'€ Barata said over the weekend.

'€œCitilink, Sriwijaya and Garuda Indonesia all requested additional flights for Jakarta-Denpasar routes,'€ he added.

He said Sriwijaya Air also filed extra seats for routes serving Jakarta-Malang, Jakarta-Solo, Makassar-Kendari, Makassar-Manokwari, while its subsidiary, NAM Air, requested additional flights for the Denpasar-Surabaya and Yogyakarta-Pontianak routes.

The number of aircraft that will be operated by the airlines serving scheduled flights reached 430 units, which will serve flights at 32 airports across the country.

Barata said Citilink would operate Airbus A320 while Garuda was set to operate its widebody aircraft, Boeing B747 and B777. Nam Air would operate Boeing B737 for the additional flights.

According to him, with the additional 74,619 seats, total air transportation passengers during this year'€™s holiday season is predicted to reach 977,027.

However, he said, the number of extra seats was likely to increase further as several scheduled airlines, including Lion Air, AirAsia Indonesia, Batik Air and Wings Air, had yet to submit their requests for additional seats.

The ministry predicted that the number of air transport passengers during this year'€™s Christmas and New Year holidays would reach 3.7 million, a 5.85 percent increase compared to the same period last year, which saw 3.5 million passengers.

The number of travelers during this year'€™s holiday season would increase 4.9 percent to 14 million, from the 13.3 million recorded last year, the ministry said.

The sea transportation sector is projected to see the highest growth, increasing 9 percent from the previous year.

Transportation Ministry'€™s land transportation acting director general, Sugiharjo, meanwhile said the government would also ensure price stability for transportation fares during the year-end holidays.

He said the government would impose administrative sanctions on operators that violated the price ceiling as regulated by the ministry.