Third Runway Soekarno-Hatta International Airport to be Completed in 2017?
Angkasa Pura II, the state-owned airport services company that operates airports in the western part of Indonesia, says the 3rd runway of the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, located just outside Indonesia's capital city of Jakarta, will be finished in late-2017. This third runway, expected to cost IDR 4 trillion (USD $300 million), is part of a big expansion and renovation plan aimed at raising the airport's passenger capacity and flight frequency. Construction of the runway should start in early 2017 provided the land acquisition process has been completed.
Budi Karya Sumadi, General Director of Angkasa Pura II, says the company is currently dealing with the land acquisition process. An estimated 173,19 hectare plot of land is required for the construction of the third runway of the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. Sumadi is optimistic that the land acquisition process will be completed later this year. The Banten Province has already approved the location of the third runway. However, the company will still need to deal with three villages (desa) - Desa Rawa Burung, Desa Rawa Rengas and Desa Bojong Renged - as well as two administrative districts (kelurahan). The desa and kelurahan are the lowest levels of government in Indonesia.
However, despite Sumadi's optimism, it is well known that land acquisition is one of the key bottlenecks to infrastructure development in Indonesia. Many projects have been delayed or cancelled altogether due to the difficulty of acquiring the necessary land for a project. The main problem being that landowners request high prices when they know their land is envisaged to become the location for an infrastructure project. Prices can go as high as IDR 25 million (approx. USD $1,880) per square meter, a very high price for Indonesian standards. Indonesia did see the passing of the Land Acquisition Act in 2011 (a law designed to speed up the land acquisition process) but due to lack of political will this law remained largely unused. However, there is now one interesting case - the USD $4 billion controversial Batang power plant project in Central Java - where Indonesia's Supreme Court judged in favor of the developers forcing landowners to sell their land for the larger benefit of Indonesia; a ruling based on the Land Acquisition Act. But it still implied a long delay before construction was able to commence.
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Sumadi added the third runway is necessary for Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, the busiest airport in Indonesia, because there will be an estimated 420,000 flights per year at the airport by 2018.
The existing Soekarno-Hatta International Airport was designed to handle about 26 million passengers per year. However, in recent years passenger traffic grew to more than 60 million passengers per year. Therefore, a large-scale renovation has been underway. Terminals I and II were renovated to enlarge passenger capacity to 18 and 19 million, respectively, from nine million, each, previously. Meanwhile, Terminal III is now able to handle 25 million passengers (from five million passengers previously) after renovations were completed in mid-2016. A new terminal (Terminal 4) is being developed and should be operational by 2021.