Recently the airport company for Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport issued a circular stating that the airport’s location is within the territory of the city of Tangerang in Banten province, and not in the borough of Cengkareng in Jakarta. In the circular, the airport requests that welcoming cabin announcments such as “Welcome to Soekarno Hatta Airport, Jakarta” be changed to “Welcome to Soekarno Hatta Airport, Tangerang, Banten.”

The circular came about after Tangerang city mayor, Arief R Wirmansyah, protested to the cabin announcements previously used. Not only that, he also asked the airport to change it’s IATA airport code from CGK (synonymous with Cengkareng), to something more suitable for Tangerang.

The “issues” between Jakarta and Tangerang regarding the airport isn’t new. The airport expansion has in several occasions conflicted with Tangerang’s plans. Maybe this compromise is made to ensure that the much needed expansion to Indonesia’s main gateway can be made. However, I do find some things in this story to be quite, disturbing.

The new cabin announcement is disassociating the airport with the city it serves, Jakarta, which is the destination of a majority of people that are going to exit the airport by land. This is different from another similar case, in Juanda Airport, where the city of Sidoarjo asked the airport to add the city’s name in the announcement, from “Welcome to Juanda Airport Surabaya” to “Welcome to Surabaya Juanda Airport at Sidoarjo.” There is no disassociation here.

The disassociation is problematic because actually, there are still Indonesians who do not know that Tangerang is next to Jakarta. This definitely poses it’s own problem. Some have already reported confused passengers, whom after hearing the announcement and asked the crew or airline staff, “I’m going to Jakarta, do I need to get out of the aircraft and report to the ground staff?”

The next question is, what would happen to carriers who do not heed to the request? Would any punishments be dished out and if so, on what regulatory basis? Then, is this applicable to foreign airlines too? If foreign airlines do not have to comply to the request while local airlines do, is this not discrimination against Indonesian airlines?

Applying this to foreign airlines will have it’s challenges too. Not only would the English announcments have to be checked, but other languages too such as Mandarin, Korean, Arabic, French, Dutch, Turkish, etc. I doubt that the Tangerang city council has any resources to check on those announcements and will probably end up letting foreign airlines go while local airlines get bullied.

On the IATA code change request, I think it just shows the ignorance and arrogance of the mayor. Let’s not forget that CGK is also grouped under the Jakarta city code, JKT. I wonder if the mayor would also ask for CGK to be removed from the Jakarta city code group?

And then would the mayor also “ask” for airlines to not put Jakarta as a destination associated with the airport because the airport is in Tangerang? If he does, again, would he ask and force foreign carriers to comply? How? Again, if he has that in mind, it is likely that the local carriers will be bullied into compliance. Now, wouldn’t this result in unfairness? Imagine if local airlines has to put on their website and booking engine, “Tangerang – CGK” while foreign airlines can still use “Jakarta – CGK”, imagine the effect on foreign ticket sales! Heck, if an Indonesian can not know that Tangerang is next to Jakarta, it’s almost a sure bet that almost all foreigners do not know either. Imagine also the effect on the economy of Indonesia (and Tangerang too) if foreign business people decided to not do business in Jakarta thinking, “heck, I can’t even fly there!” If that ever happens, I bet the Tangerang mayor would just wash his hands and refuse to accept that he has something to do with the outcome.

Today, one of my Twitter followers, “Timetraveller”, reported

It seems that the attempted disassociation has a loophole, in that airlines would just comply with the request, and add “Welcome to Jakarta” at the end. HANG ON! “Welcome to Jakarta?” on Tangerang soil? Oh dear, isn’t this just going to spark off a new feud?

In the end, I asked Mr. “Timetraveller” to ask if foreign airlines were informed of the request (as he was flying off to Singapore on Air France after his arrival above). His answer was:

Now why is that not a surprise? It seems Mr. Mayor can’t flex his muscles to foreign airlines. Ridiculous policies such as this unfortunately, forms discrimination against local airlines, and it does in one way or another, negatively affect the airlines’ Passenger Experience, which is probably a term totally alien to some of our officials here in Indonesia.

So next time you land in Soekarno-Hatta International airport and you hear a passenger ask, “I’m going to Jakarta, do I need to get out of the aircraft and report to the ground staff?” You know who to blame.

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