Hubbub on Flight Ticket Discourse

KOMPAS/WISNU WIDIANTORO

Harga tiket pesawat jurusan Pekanbaru-Jakarta di salah satu  aplikasi penjualan tiket pesawat online Traveloka, Jakarta, Minggu (16/6/2019).

Discussion over airfares has opened a new dimension, including domestic flights with overseas transit and inviting foreign airlines.

Riau Governor Syamsuar asked permission from the coordinating economic minister to allow state civil servants from Riau to take a transit route in Malaysia or Singapore for domestic business trips. The goal is to get a ticket price that is lower than the price of a ticket from a domestic flight. The Riau governor\'s initiative became an alternative offer to save the provincial government’s budget, according to the budget ceiling (Kompas, 17/6/2019).

The impact of expensive airplane tickets appears in several forms. From the data of Sultan Syarif Kasim International Airport (SSK) II Pekanbaru, the number of flights decreased 31.3 percent from the previous year. During the 2019 Lebaran season, the number of airplane passengers decreased by 27.23 percent compared to 2018. According to the head of research and development at the Transportation Ministry, Sugihardjo, from a total of 18.34 million users of transportation services, the number of aircraft passengers is only 3.52 million. This number is down from 4.85 million in 2018.

For Pekanbaru, for example, as explained by the executive general manager of SSK II Pekanbaru Airport Jaya Tahoma Sirait, the decline in the number of flights has had a large impact. As of May, it suffered a potential loss of Rp 3 billion per month.

Besides the passengers are switching to land and water transportation modes, another phenomenon is the shift in tourist destinations, namely abroad, especially to neighboring countries, Malaysia and Singapore. This shift leads to a decline in income in the tourist sector, as experienced by hotels, inns, souvenir craftsmen and producers of food souvenirs.

The chairman of the Riau Region of the Indonesia Travel Company Association, Dede Firmansyah, said the dominance of the domestic aircraft business by the Garuda Indonesia group and Lion Air is unhealthy and burdensome to the community. The airlines have been arguing about high tariffs, namely attributing to the high cost of airplane rental payments and part of aviation fuel purchases that use US dollars. There is a large gap between income in rupiah and expenditure in US dollars.

The government, as a regulator, is faced with the challenge of finding a balance, between the interests of the airlines and those of service users. Therefore, there is also a view that flight costs should be audited.

The high price of flight tickets, according to flight observer Chappy Hakim, is only the tip of the iceberg of various problems regarding national flights. The idea of inviting foreign airlines, according to Chappy, is contrary to the principle of kabotase, where foreign airlines are prohibited from serving domestic routes. Since air transportation is among the backbones of national transportation, we encourage the discovery of fair solutions, both for the airlines and society.