JAKARTA - Airasia flights from Malaysia open the Kuala Lumpur-Balikpapan-Kuala Lumpur route twice a week every Wednesday and Friday with Airbus 320 aircraft with a capacity of 180 passengers.
"The first flight from Kuala Lumpur landed Wednesday, March 8, then immediately returned to Kuala Lumpur," said General Manager (GM) of PT Angkasa Pura I Sepinggan Ahmad Syaugi Shahab, quoted from Antara, Thursday, March 9.
PT Angkasa Pura I Sepinggan Branch is the manager of Sepinggan International Airport, Balikpapan, East Kalimantan.
On that inaugural flight, the AirAsia AK-482 aircraft carried 63 passengers from Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) and carried 68 passengers from Balikpapan. The flight is approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes. On Friday, AirAsia AK-483 was served.
Rute baru ini memberi banyak pilihan bagi kami, kata Yongci, salah satu penumpang yang baru turun dari pesawat yang datang dari Klia.
KLIA, due to the need for various ethnic backgrounds in Malaysia, has flight routes that are not served from hub airports in Indonesia such as Soekarno-Hatta International Airport or Djuanda, Surabaya; including Ngurah Rai, Bali, as well as Lombok Praya in Lombok. There is no direct flight from Indonesia to Kathmandu, Nepal, for example. Everything requires transiting in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, or Bangkok.
"Now we can go directly to Singapore, now go directly to Kuala Lumpur, it can save time, maybe also cost a decent amount," said Adri, who used to guide tourist trips with special interests.
Entering 2023, along with the COVID-19 outbreak that is increasingly overcoming, Sepinggan Airport serves 2 international flight routes, namely Balikpapan-Singapore and Balikpapan-Kuala Lumpur.
Previously, the two routes had been successful, especially Balikpapan-Singapore to serve oil and gas expatriates in the City of Oil. Some instead still live in Singapore, or send their children to the city country, while Balikpapan is only a transit point to the offshore oil bridge.
Now the Balikpapan-Singapore route is served by Scoot Airlines, part of the Singapore Airlines Group such as Silka Air.
The reopening of this route is believed to be for the optimism of these airlines, both Scoot and Air Asia, for growth in Balikpapan and especially the transfer of the State Capital (IKN) Indonesia from Jakarta to Nusantara, a new city that is being built in northern Balikpapan.
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