Angkasa Pura II, Indonesia’s largest airport operator is looking to spend billions of dollars to build a new airport in Jakarta and upgrade the existing one to cater to an unprecedented travel boom and compete with neighbouring countries for tourism revenue.
The state-owned operator of 16 airports across Indonesia will conclude a feasibility study for a greenfield airport in Jakarta this year that may require an investment of about Rp100 trillion (US$7 billion), according to president director Muhammad Awaluddin. The company is already spending hundreds of million dollars in adding a new terminal and a runway in Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, he said.
Jakarta is the latest to join cities in Southeast Asia, including Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, in expanding capacity as travel demand in the Asia-Pacific region is set to double in the next two decades. Passenger traffic in Soekarno-Hatta may surge 46 percent to top 100 million within a decade, Angkasa Pura estimates.
Indonesia’s domestic airline market has boomed in recent years to become the fifth largest in the world. Local air traffic more than tripled between 2005 and 2017 to 97 million people, according to the CAPA Centre for Aviation.
Jakarta and its suburbs are currently serviced by Soekarno-Hatta and Halim airports, which together handled 73 million passengers last year, much more than their designed capacity, Awaluddin said.
The site for the greenfield airport could be close to the Soekarno-Hatta airport or could be built on land reclaimed from the sea. The facility, if built adjacent to the existing airport, will need clearing of about 600 hectares (1,483 acres) of land, and reclamation of 2,000 hectares if in a new location.
A new terminal, whose construction will begin in 2021, will be able to handle about 45 million passengers. Angkasa Pura is also “revitalising” the existing terminals one and two to boost capacity to 25 million each from about 9 million, Awaluddin said.
Source: South China Morning Post
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