CAAS seeks more details on Jakarta airport works

SINGAPORE — One week after Singapore Airlines’ (SIA) had to cut five flights per week to Jakarta because of runway maintenance works at Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) has asked the Indonesian authorities for more details about how the airport and other carriers have been affected.

The authority also reiterated that it hopes the runway maintenance works — estimated to be completed in 2018 — will be completed expeditiously, and that the impact on airlines will be “fairly distributed across all carriers”.

Responding to media queries, a CAAS spokesperson said on Friday (Dec 9): “We hope to receive the information quickly so that we can find ways to reschedule SIA’s services without the need for any cancellations.”

The comments came days after Indonesian current affairs magazine Tempo published several articles on the issue, including a commentary titled “A Mountain out of a Molehill”, which accused SIA of wanting “special treatment”. 

“Singapore Airlines is not the only airline to be affected by the runway improvements, which are also underway at Juanda Airport, Surabaya, and Ngurah Rai, Denpasar. Other airlines such as Jetstar Asia, Oman Air, Emirates and Garuda Indonesia are facing the same problem,” said the commentary, which was published on Tuesday. 

Another Tempo article, “Lobbying over the runway”, which was published on the same day, said that other affected airlines, which included Silk Air, Saudi Arabia Airlines and Etihad were not granted additional flights. However, SilkAir does not operate flights to Jakarta while Eithad told TODAY that its flights were not affected.

Several airlines that operate flights to the Jakarta airport including Oman Air, Garuda, AirAsia, did not respond to TODAY’s queries by press time. 

Nevertheless, Tiger Air, a subsidiary of SIA that offers up to 21 flights per week to Soekarno-Hatta airport, said it was not affected.

Within the span of two weeks last month, the Indonesian civil aviation authorities, citing runway maintenance works, had put SIA’s launch of inaugural thrice-weekly flights linking Singapore, Jakarta and Sydney on hold, then temporarily cut back the carrier’s weekly flights to Jakarta from 63 to 58 from Dec 1.

After these developments, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, at the Singapore-Indonesia Leaders’ Retreat in Semarang last month, expressed his hope that the delay of the new flight route would be resolved soon. “The explanation given has been that it’s to do with the maintenance of the runway at Soekarno-Hatta and we hope that would be completed expeditiously and furthermore, if there is any impact on the airlines, it will be fairly distributed,” he said then.

The “Lobbying over the runway” article reported how a group of Singapore officials, including CAAS director-general Kevin Shum, had tried to meet the Indonesian director-general of Air Transport at various locations to discuss the cutting back of Singapore-Jakarta flights.

In its commentary, Tempo criticised SIA for causing the matter to be raised to Indonesia President Joko Widodo, labelling the move as an “overreaction” that has led to concerns of upsetting bilateral relations.

“This matter should be resolved between Singapore Airlines with Angkasa Pura II and the Transportation Ministry. Is it of strategic importance requiring a presidential decision?” it read. Angkasa Pura II is the state-owned airport operator.

While it acknowledged that the delay to the launch of the new Singapore-Jakarta-Sydney flights would have “quite a big impact on Singapore Airlines’ profits”, the commentary said the resurfacing works for the airport runway was important and would benefit SIA eventually because bigger aircraft would be able to land and take off from the airport.

Noting that Indonesia Transport Minister Budi Karya had said the reduction in slots and delay to the launch of new flights affecting SIA were “entirely due to the runway improvements”, the commentary called on Jakarta to return the matter to the Transportation Ministry and Ankasa Pura.

“This ‘trivial’ matter should be discussed between departments at the level of state-owned enterprises and directors-general,” it added.