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Holiday air traffic to surge beyond initial projection
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A Garuda Indonesia aircraft takes off from Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali on June 13. (Antara/Fikri Yusuf)
T
he Transportation Ministry has said that air traffic during the holiday season is likely to increase beyond the initial projection of 5 percent, with the number of passengers having increased by 5.8 percent on average from normal days.
"During peak days, the number of passengers increased by between 11 and 12 percent, but during the four days after Christmas, it only increased by between 1 and 2 percent,” Transportation Ministry air transportation director general Agus Santoso said at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten, on Friday.
He projected that air traffic would significantly increase when people return home from vacation.
The government had anticipated a possible increase in seasonal holiday traffic between Dec. 18 and Jan. 8.
Ministry data show that the number of passengers of domestic flights reached 2.94 million from Dec. 18 to 27, a 8.88 percent increase from the figure in the same period last year, while the number of passengers of international flights reached 456.319, 0.23 percent down from the figure in the same period last year.
Meanwhile, Agus explained that the on-time-performance (OTP) of flights currently stood at 80 percent, unchanged from last year.
Agus said he hoped that the figure would increase to a whole-year performance of 85 percent.
"We wanted to improve the OTP, but the delays during the surging number of passengers was inevitable," he added. (srs/bbn)
