behramjee wrote:Just a general question not concerning GA but the city of Surabaya (country's 2nd largest).
Being Indonesia's second largest city with 10 million people and also the country's second richest, how come there are no medium/long haul nonstop flights from the city to mega hub airports? Isnt there any demand to warrant flights to DXB, JED, NRT, SYD, MEL, ICN, PEK and PVG?
Surely the entire Indonesian international market cannot just be revolving around CGK and DPS !
It doesn't, but I'd imagine Garuda would rather consolidate all of those passengers onto long-haul international flights out of Jakarta taking feed from Surabaya along with all of the other Indonesian cities and some international connections. Maybe Tokyo and other large Asian cities could support service, but the market is very competitive.
You also have to consider that out of Surabaya there are plenty of options via Singapore, Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur to reach faraway places like Europe. To Australia it is easy to connect to any city there via Bali or Jakarta and fares are pretty low. I see that there is already a flight on Saudi Arabian to Medina, with onward connections available. Dubai maybe could work, I guess Emirates could analyze it but Turkish and Qatar Airways chose to fly to Jakarta and Bali, so maybe that's close enough.
Given that you can fly from Surabaya to Singapore, KL, Jakarta or Bali for under 50$ and those cities have cheap long-haul flights, I think a lot of the traffic is going to go that way. The good news is that perhaps with new aircraft like the A320neo, longer routes might become viable from places like Surabaya.