Flight Tickets Still Mighty, Sea Transportation is a mainstay

July 8, 2019 | Other Activities

Traveling or traveling is one of the basic human needs, therefore in the calculation of inflation the transportation group has enough to contribute as part of the life needs of the community. As an archipelagic province which consists of 2 large islands namely Bangka and Belitung Island the current "from" and "to" Province is only played by two main modes of transportation namely Sea Transport and Air Transport. Based on the official Statistics News release issued by the Bangka Belitung Islands Provincial Statistics Agency on July 1, inter-island sea transport passengers departing from the Bangka Belitung Islands Province in May 2019 were recorded at 25.57 thousand people, up by 46.93 percent compared to the condition April 2019 which reached 17.40 thousand people, this increase seems reasonable if we associate with the moment of Eid Al-Fitr where most people travel during that period to just "Return home" and enjoy the holidays. If we cumulative the number of sea transport passengers in January-May 2019, there are 77.19 thousand passengers departing from the Bangka Belitung Islands Province, interesting when we compare this amount with the same period in 2018 (January-May) there is a sufficient increase Significant namely 75.90 percent, as well as the flow of passengers coming to the Bangka Belitung Islands Province in the period January-May 2019 as many as 67.12 thousand passengers compared to January-May 2018 conditions as many as 47.70 thousand passengers or an increase in the number of passengers 40.72 percent.

As two modes of transportation with the same function but different methods, the flow of passengers in air transportation experiences the opposite, recorded since the phenomenon of high ticket prices or in the condition of January-May 2019 the number of passengers departing from the Bangka Belitung Islands Province is 442.04 thousand passengers or a decrease of 28.45 percent compared to the same conditions in 2018 as many as 617.79 thousand passengers, even so with the flow of passengers coming to the Bangka Belitung Islands Province conditions from January to May 2019 there were 456.98 thousand passengers compared to conditions January-May 2018 as many as 635.21 thousand passengers or a decrease of 28.06 percent.

Shifting Transportation Patterns

From the elaboration of the data above, it is slow but sure that the air transportation mode still accommodates most of the passengers from and out of Bangka Belitung province, but the trend that occurs regarding the number of passengers shows that the majority of passengers begin to meet transportation needs from and out of the Province Bangka Belitung Islands. Tariff differences seem to be the biggest cause of this shift, especially since the payment of a baggage system on one of the airlines in Indonesia has been implemented, the movement of airplane ticket prices almost always approaches the upper limit value, for example the Tanjungpandan-Jakarta route is currently difficult to find on online travel sites Airplane ticket prices in the range of 600 thousand which are not difficult for us to meet before the phenomenon of paid baggage occurs, as evidenced by the release of the Inflation Rate of Tanjungpandan in May 2019, Transport, Communication and Financial Services expenditure groups are the highest inflation expenditure group of 4.54 percent throughout 2019 with commodities contributing the largest inflation, namely air freight rates. On the other hand, for sea transportation, the ticket price for the same route with the Pelni Ship fleet is only around 180 thousand per passenger. The difference in travel time and number of fleets is indeed still making air transport a mode of transportation that transports the largest number of passengers but it is not impossible if in the future sea transportation modes emerge with shorter travel times and adequate schedules and tariffs that are still at odds with air freight rates , sea transportation mode will again be excellent for carrying passengers from and out of the Bangka Belitung Islands province.

Written by :

Syahroni, SST

Chief of IPDS Section Statistics-BPS Belitung Timur Regency

BPS-Statistics Indonesia

Belitung Timur Regency

Flight Tickets Still Mighty, Sea Transportation is a mainstay