Airport Tighten Passenger Controls: Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Jakarta

There are a lot of cowboys out there on the streets in Indonesia who sell tickets ‘under the counter’ and also a lot of ‘fly-by-night’ operators who do the same. Domestically, you don’t need to provide a passport or any other form of identification when you check-in at the airport. So, you could steal someone’s ticket and board flight!.

Always buy your tickets from a reputable travel agent or direct from the airline office itself. The authorities knowing who is on the flight is important and the recent Garuda Airlines crash in Yogyakarta is a fine example.

Now, Starting March 31, authorities at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport will enforce a new policy that requires travellers to produce their IDs along with their tickets at two check points as Multa Fidrus explains:

Travellers who purchase their tickets from middlemen will no longer be considered eligible to fly.

Tatang Ischan, the director general of air transportation at the Transportation Ministry, said Tuesday that staff at check-in counters and boarding lounges would be checking the names on tickets against the names on passengers’ ID cards.

“We have long been coming up against the problem of passenger list errors, because the identities of the passengers registered with each airline are different from the passengers actually on board,” Tatang said after presiding over the inauguration of the airport’s new administration chief, Heri Bakti, who replaces Bambang Tjahyono.

“We have tightened passenger controls … passenger identities will be checked twice, with the final check carried out just moments before takeoff.”

He said airport authorities would form a special team to implement the new policy and if any airline breached the regulation as stipulated in the 1989 ministerial decree on flight safety, they would shut down its counter at the airport.