KULON PROGO - Angkasa Pura Airports is set to achieve the target of one million foreign tourists visiting Borobudur Super Priority Area (DSP) via Yogyakarta International Airport (YIA) in Kulon Progo.
The commitment was conveyed by Angkasa Pura Airports President Director Faik Fahmi in the Focus Group Discussion (FGD) "Realizing 1 Million Tourists Visit to Borobudur DSP through the Development of YIA Accessibility" organized by the Ministry of Tourism at Yogyakarta International Airport, Kulon Progo on Wednesday (18/9/2019).
According to the data, passengers at Yogyakarta’s Adisutjipto International Airport in the last five years (2014-2018) shows an average growth of 7.8% per year. In 2018, the airport served 8.4 million passengers. Aircraft movements have also continued to grow positively of around 6.45% in the past five years. As many as 85,000 aircraft movements were served by Adisutjito International Airport in 2018.
"The presence of YIA will be able to provide larger capacity for domestic and international flights to directly land in Yogyakarta Province. Supported by 219,000 square meters’ passenger terminal, YIA can serve up to 20 million passengers per year. This number is ten times bigger compared to Yogyakarta Adisutjipto International Airport capacity which can accommodate 1.8 million passengers per year,” Faik said.
In addition, YIA also has a fairly good runway. The heaviest wide body (Boeing 777-300 ER) and largest (A-380) commercial aircraft are able to land on the airport’s 3,250 x 45 m runway with PCN 107.
"This is one of the advantages of YIA which should be used by airlines to bring more passengers to Yogyakarta," Faik said.
To attract airlines to open routes to and from YIA, Angkasa Pura Airports provides several incentive programs. Among them are the exemption of landing fees in the first three months, exemption of a landing fee of 50% for the following three months and a program for exempting promotion costs and airline inauguration fees at the airport for a month.
"We are optimistic that good synergy with various parties, especially the central government, provincial administration, airlines and supported by adequate accessibility, YIA will be able to become an international gateway for the arrival of one million foreign tourists to the major destination of Borobudur," Faik added.
The number of YIA passengers continues to grow
For information, since the opening of the first commercial flight on May 6, 2019 to August 31, 2019, YIA has served 96,000 domestic passengers. Currently, there are 14 flight schedules every day in YIA with destinations to Jakarta (CGK), Jakarta (HLP), Palangkaraya, Samarinda, Lombok and Makassar, served by four airlines, namely Citilink, Batik Air, Indonesia AirAsia, and Lion Air.
On September 25, 2019, there will be six more flight routes at YIA operated by Lion Air. The airline bearing the red lion logo will open the Kualanamu-YIA-Kualanamu route, YIA-Tarakan-YIA, YIA-Pontianak-YIA. Therefore, there will be 20 flight schedules served at YIA.
"In the future, several airlines also plan to open several new routes to and from YIA, including Citilink, Batik Air, Lion Air and Garuda Indonesia. This certainly makes YIA see more passengers and they will get alternative flight schedules and routes which increasingly diverse," Faik added.
The addition of the flight schedule is in line with the progress of airport development that continues to see improvement. Until September 8, 2019, YIA's development progress had reached 82%. The construction of the airport is targeted to be 100% complete by the end of the year and can be fully operational in early 2020. Later, most flights which currently served at Adisutjito International Airport will be transferred to YIA.
