JAKARTA (The Jakarta Post/ANN): The government has inaugurated Toraja Airport in South Sulawesi and Pantar Airport in East Nusa Tenggara to improve connectivity and tourism to the two remote regencies in eastern Indonesia.
Toraja Airport, which opened in September last year, is located in Tana Toraja regency and can accommodate some 45,000 passengers a year. Developers had to flatten three hills to build the Rp 800 billion (US$55.49 million) facility in the mountainous region.
Pantar Airport is located in Alor regency at the outermost part of East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) province, bordering East Timor. The facility can accommodate around 35,000 passengers a year.
“We hope these two new airports can be used to spur economic growth in the regions, create more jobs and trigger new economic centers, ” President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo said during a virtual inauguration on Thursday.
The inauguration came at a time when fewer Indonesians were boarding airplanes as a result of the government’s Covid-19 mobility restrictions, which caused the number of domestic flight passengers to fall 62.88 per cent year-on-year (yoy) to 2.34 million in January, according to data from Statistics Indonesia (BPS).
Toraja Airport is expected to attract tourists from Bali, Jakarta and West Java, among other Indonesian regions outside of South Sulawesi, especially as Indonesia’s tourism industry has been banking on domestic tourists to stay afloat ever since foreign tourist arrivals dropped to a decade low in March last year.
Tana Toraja is a cultural tourist destination famous for its iconic traditional homes, Arabica coffee and buffalo fights.
Toraja Airport also slashes the time needed to travel between Tana Toraja and Makassar, which is the provincial capital and the only connecting destination, from nine hours to around 50 minutes, according to the President.
“What does this mean? The mobility of people and goods will see an acceleration, ” said Jokowi.
Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said that one ATR plane had travelled “almost every day, return flight, ” between Makassar and Toraja Airport since September last year.
The facility’s 2,000-metre-long runway is only enough for short-haul regional aircraft such as the ATR 72-500 and ATR 72-600. He also said Toraja Airport replaced Pongtiku Airport that had a much smaller capacity and that could not be expanded.
Pantar Airport is expected to provide an alternative mode of transportation for when bad weather prevents people from using sea transportation to reach the island regency.
“This is the outermost part of NTT and we have developed it. At least a Grand Caravan [aircraft] can land there, ” said Minister Budi.
Developing infrastructure is one of the cornerstones of President Jokowi’s administration that allocated Rp 414 trillion from the state budget for infrastructure projects this year, up 49 per cent from the Rp 281.1 trillion allocated last year. The 2021 funds will mostly go to economic recovery programmes, providing public services and building connectivity infrastructure. - The Jakarta Post/Asia News Network
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