JAKARTA: Indonesia plans to negotiate with Singapore to increase the Jakarta-Singapore flight quota after local airlines have used up all the allocated seats, said Edward Silooy, Director of Air Transportation at the Ministry of Transportation.Since three months ago, the 27,671 seat quota for Jakarta-Singapore route has been utilized by five Indonesian airlines Garuda Indonesia, Lion Air, Indonesia AirAsia, Sriwijaya Air, dan Batavia Air.Batavia airline has proposed to the government to renegotiate a flight quote agreement with Singapore, Edward noted."I can not say the number, it depends on the number of flights from Indonesia to Singapore and vice versa," Edward said. So far, Batavia is the only national airline which proposed the additional frequency of flights from Jakarta to Singapore.Commercial Director of PT Metro Batavia (Batavia Air) Sukirno Sukarna said the company was forced to open a flight route from Bandung to Singapure after it used up the quota in the Jakarta-Singapore route."Flight quota from Jakarta to Singapore has been used up since 3 months ago. Whereas, we want to add another flight schedule," he said yesterday.He explained that his airline seeks to raise the frequency of flights from Jakarta to Singapore in the evening to add its regular morning flights.Sukirno said the negotiation of air agreement with Singapore must be done carefully because the city state is also likely to want an additional quota."Yesterday [Sunday] we met chaps from Singapore, they want to add seats for Jakarta-Singapore route as well, but I think we must review the request first. The demand for Singapore-Jakarta route is big. We don't want them to get two additional quota seats while we get only one, for example," he said.Now, there are three airlines serving flights from Singapore to Indonesia. They are Singapore Airlines, Valueair/Jetstar and Tiger Airways.New routeSukirno Sukarna said Batavia will open a new route to Singapore from Bandung beginning July 28 using Airbus 320 with a flight frequency of three times a week. For Bandung-Singapore, we do not fly everyday. We are still testing the market first.In the early stages, he targeted the load factor in the new route to reach 70%.The targeted passengers of the Bandung-Singapore are workers and tourists from Singapore. (t03/msw)

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