Jakarta is all set to welcome a new airport in the outskirts of the city to serve as an alternative to the existing Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, around 15 km north of it. Construction is scheduled to begin from the next decade and will have a public-private partnership. The draft plan obtained from the country’s airport management company details all the works including two runways, passenger terminal, and maintenance centre for aircrafts. Railway and highway construction projects to connect to the airport are also in talks.
The $10 billion project was first proposed in 2011 and is due for completion in 2024. This will be the first new airport in a close proximity to Jakarta since Soekarno-Hatta was opened in 1985. The two airports will have a combined capacity of more than 100 million passengers per year which will surpass Singapore’s Changi Airport, currently the largest airport in Southeast Asia. This comes at a perfect time for Indonesia as it plans to bid for the 2032 Summer Olympics which falls in line with their goal to transform the country into an economic power. With its GDP expected to cross the top 10 by 2030, the nation will see a rise in business travelers and tourists.
This new airport is expected to take some of the load off the already busy Soekarno-Hatta airport which handled a whopping 63 million passengers last year. Building a third terminal in 2016 only lead to crowding and delays and did not help much. Even though the government will begin construction on a fourth terminal and a new runway by 2020, they’re promoting this new airport as a practical solution.
Source: Outlook Traveller