Airline Passenger Numbers 2010

Last updated: February 7, 2011

Passengers numbers in the world’s 12th biggest domestic market continue to grow.

Passengers numbers on Indonesian domestic routes rose to 43.7 million people in 2010, up from 35.6 million in 2009, a 22.7% increase, according to the national statistics body Biro Pusat Statistik (BPS).

Numbers of passengers flying internationally increased by 20%, from 8 million in 2009 to 9.6 million last year.

BPS official Rusman Heriawan said of the figures

Both domestic and international routes are booming, plane travel is increasingly challenging the role of rail and sea traffic.

By comparison, passenger numbers on trains in the country declined by 1.7% year on year. However sea traffic saw a considerable increase, up 18%, from 5.9 million people in 2009, to 7 million in 2010.

Rusman put the success of Indonesian airlines in attracting more and new business in the aggressive pricing practises of ‘no frills’ airlines like Lion Air and Air Asia.

6 Comments on “Airline Passenger Numbers 2010”

1. Chris says:

   February 11, 2011 at 9:39 pm

   Interesting counterpoint to this story is how Soekarno-Hatta is now ranked 22nd in the list of world’s busiest airports:

   http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/12/09/soekarnohatta-ranks-22-top-100-busiest-airports.html
   and
   http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/12/16/issue-soekarnohatta-no-22-busiest-airports.html

   Some of the comments at the bottom are interesting reading…

2. David says:

   February 12, 2011 at 1:06 pm

   Hi Chris, I had a quick look, 22nd looks to be the rank for 2009, while the most recent figures from most of 2010 it’s rocketed up to 16th – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_busiest_airports_by_passenger_traffic#2010_year-to-date_statistics

   So it’s making a run at the top ten! Heaven help it if it makes it there! As a related aside I see that Lion Air want to shift the Jakarta operations of Wings Air to Halim as they see Soekarno-Hatta as too over-loaded…there’s a court case going on over it, if they win they’ve set aside $100-200 million to build the terminal.

3. Oigal says:

   February 12, 2011 at 1:46 pm

   I actually don’t find the airport too bad except for the inexplicable parking of planes miles from vacant gates and the horrendous amount of touts, crooks and dodgy taxi operators waiting to grift the unwary once they leave the airport.

4. Chris says:

   February 13, 2011 at 7:45 pm

   Thanks for the update. To continue the conversation:

   1. I’m guessing the 2009 number of passengers is externally verified (the original article was written in September 2010), whereas the 2010 one isn’t yet. Whatever the number is, it’s still a lot more than the maximum number of passengers the airport is designed to handle: 22 million.

   2. I read in Tempo magazine a while ago that part of Halim’s current rules of operation is that it can only handle military flights and passenger flights less than one hour long. Having said that, Merpati did move some flights to Halim (I think the ones to Jayapura) in February 2007 due to flooding on the road to Soekarno-Hatta.

5. David says:

   February 13, 2011 at 10:52 pm

   Hi Chris, the 2010 numbers are only up to October I think.

   Lion Air already has permission from the Defence dept and the government generally to move Wings Air there; the court case is because they rented a building there from organisation X, and then organisation Y came along and complained that it was they who actually owned the building.

6. Hans says:

   February 16, 2011 at 2:45 pm

   Hope Surabaya can expand and benefit from international flights. So that we who are going there will not enrich Jakarta, often feels like it worked out how and when they are international flights roars into Jakarta. usually so late in the day so we have to stay one night in Jakarta, it cost abt 3-million that we can not fly directly Surabaya. 2×3 = 6 milijon from me to Jakarta, and I who love New York Manhatan ha ha.

   And a thought to CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan
   http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/02/15/60minutes/main20032070.shtml

   And a thought to the Iranian people, and its ironic leaders, who now murderers the Iranian people