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Anies suggests ways to develop air travel, reduce airfares
Addressing a meeting of the Indonesian Transportation Society (MTI) on Wednesday, the NasDem presidential candidate and former Jakarta governor presented several ideas on developing the country's air transportation sector, including how to reduce airfares.
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Passengers line up on Dec. 19, 2021 at a row of check-in counters at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten. (Courtesy of Kemenparekraf /-)
Presidential candidate Anies Baswedan has put forth several ideas on how to develop air transportation and reduce the airfares in the country.
“The first way is to develop a hub-and-spoke airport system to evenly distribute flights in Indonesia, both domestic and international flights,” he said at a national working meeting of the Indonesian Transportation Society (MTI) on Wednesday, as quoted by Kompas.com.
He also noted that at present, “only two airports cover 88 percent of the total international passenger traffic, namely Cengkareng and Denpasar”, referring to Soekarno-Hatta International Airport and I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport, which serve Jakarta and Bali, respectively.
Anies therefore wanted to restructure the airport system through an expansion to five main hub airports.
In addition to Jakarta and Denpasar, he said the other hub airports could be Kualanamu airport in Deli Serdang regency, North Sumatra, Juanda airport in Sidoarjo regency, East Java, and Sultan Hasanuddin airport in Gowa regency, South Sulawesi.
He also aspired to develop Mozes Kilangin Airport in Timika, Central Papua, into an additional hub to “cover the entire Indonesian territory”.
Anies also mentioned plans for fiscal incentives to reduce airfares. One such plan would involve waiving certain aviation taxes and substituting them with local tax revenue generated in cities facilitated by improved access to air transportation.
