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Govt rules out aviation fuel as cause of persistently high airfares
The Business Competition Supervisory Commission (KPPU) on Tuesday claimed that airline ticket prices remained high due to costly aviation fuel.
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A Garuda Indonesia Airbus A330 lands at Sultan Iskandar Muda International Airport in Blang Bintang, Aceh, on July 13, 2021. (AFP/Chaideer Mahyuddin)
T
he Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry says prolonged high airfares are not caused by higher aviation fuel prices but are a result of the lagging airline recovery since last year.
Tourism and Creative Economy Minister Sandiaga Uno said on Wednesday that he believed the impact of high aviation fuel prices on airline ticket prices had subsided, following a decline in international oil prices in the past few months. He also ruled out the role of tax on aviation fuel in the current high ticket prices.
To effectively reduce airline ticket prices, Indonesia needs more flights connecting domestic routes, he said. This could only be done if airlines operated as many planes as they did before the pandemic, which he estimated at up to 700 aircraft on top of current capacity.
“The number of flights and seat availability are the main factors why airline tickets remain expensive this year,” Sandiaga told reporters during a media briefing in Jakarta.
Businesses have maintained that tourism has yet to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, blaming it for fewer domestic tourist visits, which is hampered by high airline ticket prices.
Statistics Indonesia data show only 62.55 million people took domestic flights last year, which remained below the pre-pandemic level of 76.69 million in 2019.
Meanwhile, only 15.63 million people took international flights in or out of Indonesia last year, which was also below the 18.86 million recorded in 2019.
