INACA Chairman Calls Tourism Contributions Will Be An Additional Burden For Airlines

Airlines (Photo: Antara)

JAKARTA - The Association of Indonesian National Aviation Airlines (INACA) assesses that tourism contributions will be an additional burden for passengers and airlines. This is because the expensive ticket prices are feared that the number of passengers will decrease.

"With additional tourism fees in ticket components, it will make ticket prices more expensive for passengers. Airlines will also be affected because the number of passengers will decrease if ticket prices are considered expensive," said INACA Chairman Denon Prawiraatmadja quoting Antara.

This was conveyed in response to the plan to impose tourism contributions from the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy on airplane passengers. According to him, tourism fees that are being initiated by the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy (Kemenparekraf) should be added to the plane ticket price component because it will be an additional burden for passengers and airlines.

He said airplane passengers consisted of various needs, including for business purposes, family or personal events, official needs, education, holidays or travel and others. So tourism and tourists are only one of the various types of airplane passengers.

According to Denon, the flight business is currently in a rebound condition after being hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 to 2022. However, there are many obstacles faced by Indonesian airlines so that the rebound process cannot run smoothly when compared to international airlines.

The problems faced by Indonesian airlines include reduced number of aircraft availability and spare parts and human resources that are ready to operate.

In addition, the increased operating costs caused by the increase in the fuel price of avtur and the rupiah currency exchange rate continued to weaken against the US dollar currency. Whereas about 70 percent of flight operational costs are influenced by the US dollar, including related to aviation fuel prices, aircraft rental costs, maintenance costs and procurement of spare parts and others.

Meanwhile, flight rates since 2019 until now have not been adjusted by the government even though the component of flight tariff costs has increased. For example, for the US dollar exchange rate in 2019 amounted to Rp. 14,102 and 2024 to Rp. 16,182 or an increase of 15 percent. The selling price of oil also continues to rise, where 2024 reached 87.48 US dollars per barrel, an increase of 37 percent compared to 2019, which was 64 US dollars per barrel.

"Thus the imposition of tourism contributions on airplane tickets will be counterproductive, because it can cause ticket prices to rise, the number of passengers to fall, and the condition of the airline's business has also decreased so that the program to expand air transportation connectivity from the government has not been achieved," said Denon Prawiraatmadja.