Wednesday, August 2, 2017

The Indonesian government has announced it has decided to transfer all Jakarta outbound Hajj flights from Jakarta Halim to Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta Airport effective immediately.

A statement issued by the Ministry of Transportation said it had taken the decision after a departing B777 ripped a hole measuring 3x2x0.25m in Halim's runway on Friday last week. The aircraft was the first of three such flights scheduled to depart from Jakarta Halim during the first day of charters. Repairs to the affected strip took three hours to complete resulting in light delays to other departing flights.

Jakarta Halim was slated to handle a total of 159 Hajj flights this season all of which were to have been operated by either Garuda Indonesia (GA, Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta) or Saudia (SV, Jeddah). For its part, Garuda has leased in two B747-400s from Wamos Air (EB, Madrid Barajas) to operate alongside its own Hajj charter fleet of one reactivated B747-400, five B777-300(ER)s, and six A330-300s.

Source: https://ch-aviation.com/portal/news/58335-govt-switches-all-jakartas-hajj-flights-to-soekarno-hatta