The closure of Batavia Air has badly affected the ticketing business with refunds for tickets and deposited funds remaining uncertain.

Junaidi Januar, chairman of the Indonesian Airline Ticketing Association (Astindo)'s Bali chapter, said there had not been any information from the management of Batavia Air regarding ticket transactions, while at the same time, customers were claiming ticket refunds from their agencies.

"When an airline company is closed, customers are the first to get the impact. But actually we (ticketing companies) are the hardest hit, because we have to deposit quite a significant amount of money before we can make any ticket transactions," explained Januar.

Related to Batavia Air's closure, the association requires its 32 members to collect data and information on the amount of funds in deposits and ticket refunds that have to be claimed from the ailing airline company.

"All the available data will be sent to Astindo's headquarters in Jakarta for follow-up action," he added.

Ticketing companies had faced a similar situation when another privately owned airline, Adam Air, stopped operations in 2008. The refund process for tickets and deposited funds took several months. Meanwhile, some ticketing companies still had not received a refund on their deposited funds from the Adam Air management, he said.

"We are hoping that the government will also solve problems that have arisen due to the stoppage of Batavia Air operations," he added."

He explained that every ticketing agency was required to deposit an amount of money. "A ticketing company has to deposit at least Rp 15 million (US$1,545), or more, in advance to buy tickets from Batavia Air."

Ideally, any local airlines should have reserved funds to cover possible closure of operations, such as has happened with Batavia Air and Adam Air.

In Indonesia, he said, only the nation's biggest airline, Garuda Indonesia, had allocated reserved funds.

Sherly Yunita, spokesperson for state-owned airport management company Perum Angkasa Pura (PAP) I, said that Batavia Air operated a very limited service to Bali.

Batavia Air served the Jakarta-Denpasar- Huangzhou (China) return route with its A321 fleet with a capacity of 220 passengers.

The airline also flew the 188-seat B734s plying the Jakarta-Denpasar return route daily, as well as the Jakarta-Denpasar- Dili (Timor Leste) return route with its B733s every day.

The last Batavia Air service via Ngurah Rai airport took place on Jan. 30, 2013 with the arrival of the Dili-Denpasar flight and the departure of Denpasar-Dili flight.

Deputy Minister for Tourism and Creative Economy Sapta Nirwandar told journalists during a meeting here last weekend that he expected the closure of Batavia Air would not affect airline and tourism businesses.

He was optimistic that many other airlines would cover routes previously operated by Batavia Air.

"This is purely a business issue, but the government is hoping to solve the problem and we are still hopeful that it will only have a minor impact on the nation's tourism."

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