"The development and improvement of Hussein airport will be started in 2011 for the existing facilities and the upcoming 2012 the expansion of the airport terminal covering an area of 3,500 square meters will be done," he said.
According to Sunoko, the movement of passengers existing at Husein Sastranegara airport, Bandung currently reached 755 thousand per year, while the airport capacity is only for 350 thousand passengers per year.
With the potential of the air transport passengers, the improving of airport service capacity absolutely must be done for Husein airport, he added.
"The development of the first phase will be conducted from November 2011, while phase II and III will be performed until 2012. The total investment is prepared approximately Rp80 billion," Sunoko noted.
The first step to building the service capacity is thickening Husein Sastranegara airport`s runway or an overlay thickness of 15 centimeters.
Thus, after the overlay of runway airport in the Indonesia AIr Force complex, the airport has been able to accommodate the large-bodied aircraft like Airbus 320 that are excellent airline recently, Sunoko said.
"With the service capacity improvement, especially for the overlay, the flight traffic to Husein airport is predicted to increase about 70 percent. A number of airlines have put forward the opening of domestic and international routes," he added.
According to Sunoko, the passenger service capacity improvement of Husein airport clearly will boost the tourist traffic to West Java province as well as encourage the economic growth.
"West Java is one of the tourism destinations in Indonesia, where Bandung city is one of tourist destinations in the province," Sunoko said.(*)
(T.KR-LWA/HAJM/f001)
Editor: Ruslan Burhani
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
