Air travel in Sumatra

Sumatra’s lack of intraisland flights, connections to Jakarta and Southeast Asia, and how future railways could replace air travel in Sumatra.

Sumatra is the 6th largest and the 5th most populous island in the world. Both of those stats sound about right, even though there is no global correlation between island size and population (Greenland is the largest island, but is barely populated).

The more mind-blowing fact is that over 59 million people are living on the island of Sumatra. If it were a country, it would be the 25th most populous, between South Africa and Italy.

Despite this massive population, there are very few flights between cities in Sumatra. I discovered this after researching a trip to the island. I’m planning to visit all of the railway systems of Sumatra, but there are only small sections in different parts of the island. There is no Trans-Sumatra Railway yet, so I would have to get the bus or fly between the main cities.

Instead of planning my rail trip, I got sidetracked into researching air travel in Sumatra. This article looks at the flights between the main cities of Sumatra, the alternatives of driving and railways, and possible reasons why there are so few intra-island flights.

The main railways of Sumatra are centred around Medan and Palembang, and some fragments of railways near Padang. To visit them all will require some air travel, but when I started searching on Skyscanner, I couldn’t find any direct flights. This seemed odd, so I started checking the official airport pages, Wiki pages, and the airlines themselves.

Flights between major cities in Sumatra

To illustrate the lack of connectivity, I have mapped flights between the 5 most populous cities and Banda Aceh.

Here are the populations of each city (2020 census via Wikipedia).

Medan (KNO): 2,435,252

Palembang (PLM): 1,668,848

Bandar Lampung (TKG): 1,166,066

Pekanbaru (PKU): 983,356

Padang (PDG): 909,040

Banda Aceh (BTJ): 252,899

Banda Aceh is the 11th most populated city, but I’ve added it to the map to show the northern end of the island. For mapping, I use the flight mapping tool gcmap.com.

As you can see on the map, there are no flights between the two most populated cities (Medan and Palembang). I noticed that there used to be flights between some cities, and some might be restored in the future. These maps are a snapshot from May 2023.

Batam – The unofficial hub for Trans-Sumatra flights

While I was trying to book flights on Skyscanner, I kept getting offered connecting flights via Batam.

Here are the flights between Batam and the most populous cities. There are other smaller cities as well that are not shown on this map.

Batam is administratively part of Riau Islands Province and not any province in Sumatra. It is part of the region of Sumatra, as shown on this map.

Flights between Sumatra and Jakarta

An even more absurd connection alternative that was being offered by Skyscanner was to fly via Jakarta. After going through all the Wiki pages, I found that there are more flights to Jakarta than anywhere else.

There are flights from all 6 featured airports to Jakarta–Soekarno-Hatta (CGK) and Jakarta–Halim Perdanakusuma (HLP). Bengkulu (BKS) also has flights to both, while Jambi City (DJB) has flights to CGK.

Flights between Sumatra and Southeast Asia

One of the reasons I am so intrigued by Sumatra is that it is like a forgotten island in the travel world. Sumatran destinations rarely feature on departure boards in Southeast Asia. Here is the map of direct flights from Sumatra to destinations in Southeast Asia.

Most international flights connect the cities of the Strait of Malacca (Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Melaka, Singapore). The only outlier is a flight from Medan to Bangkok.

Hajj flights

Hajj flights are the only flights beyond Southeast Asia. There are more flights to Jeddah and Medina than to any other international destination.

Medan, Palembang, Padang, and Banda Aceh have flights to both Jeddah and Medina.

By comparison, the best-represented city in Southeast Asia is Kuala Lumpur, with flights from Medan, Pekanbaru, Padang, and Banda Aceh. There used to be a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Palembang, but that is no longer operating.

KUL used to be the most connected, with 5 cities (thanks mainly to AirAsia). Now it is equal first with Jeddah and Medina with 4 connections.

Hajj flights are seasonal, though, so a more instructive statistic would be the number of available seats per year to each destination.

Future Medan mega hub?

Medan made the news in 2021 when it announced plans to become a major air hub to rival KUL and SIN. As you can see from the Southeast Asia map, they are a long way from achieving this hub status.

There was a time when Medan had more international flights at the old Medan Polonia Airport. I read somewhere that there used to be direct flights from Amsterdam. Travellers used to be more adventurous, travelling overland instead of just spending all the time in Bali. oldjets.net mentions that there used to be flights from Hong Kong, Taipei, Amsterdam, Phuket, Chennai, Johor Bahru, Malacca and Ipoh. Click through for some fabulous vintage photos of airlines.

It has been announced that Qatar Airways intends to fly to Medan in 2024, so that will be a step towards diversifying flights beyond Bali and Jakarta. I would hope that the airline or tourism department can market Medan to destinations in the Qatar Airways network, but it could end up that Qatar Airways just use the flights to lure pilgrims away from the direct flights to Saudi Arabia.

Here is an international map for Medan, including Doha.

Distances between cities

While the 6th largest island is a big island, the distances between the main cities should be drivable (from my Australian perspective, at least). Flying shouldn’t be an option when the cities are relatively close. The main problem is that there isn’t a pan-island railway or highway system yet.

I took some samples of estimated driving times by Google Maps, which show the estimated distance and travel time.

The Land’s End to John o’ Groats of Sumatra is near Banda Aceh and Bandar Lampung:

– Banda Aceh – Bandar Lampung 2262 km (47 h)

Here are the distances from Medan to the major cities:

– Medan – Pekanbaru: 653 KM (14 h 8 m)

– Medan – Padang: 784 KM (18 h 44 m)

– Medan – Palembang: 1373 km (31 h)

– Medan – Bandar Lampung: 1676 km (35 h)

The two closest major cities shouldn’t require air travel, but look at the travel time:

– Pekanbaru – Padang 316 km (7 h 56 m)

Palembang and Bandar Lampung are the two best-connected cities:

– Palembang – Bandar Lampung 319 km (4 h 19 m)

Palembang to Bandar Lampung is also the only real intercity train service on the island. The train, though, takes 8 h 55 m. I have taken this train, and it takes so long because the line does a big detour inland to meet a coal mine.

If you’ve never been to Sumatra, these times might seem slow. I am looking at these times and think that they have improved.

My longest Sumatra bus trip in one sitting was from Parapat (near Lake Toba) to Bukittinggi, near Padang in West Sumatra

Google says it is 502 km and 13 h 24 m. My bus trip in 2009 was about 18 hours, and I recall unsealed roads with potholes

I credit this gruelling bus trip as being the bus trip that got me interested in railway transport in Southeast Asia.

Why are there so few flights within Sumatra?

Here are some reasons why air travel in Sumatra is the way it is.

There are no big cities

Even though there are nearly 60 million people in Sumatra, Medan (the largest city) has only 2.4 million people. There is no outsized megacity that dominates the island.

If there were a mega hub in the middle of the island, then it would make sense to turn that into a hub airport.

Air travel turns islands into one land mass

Instead of looking at all the cities contained on one island, look at Indonesia as a whole. The nearest megacity is Jakarta, and it is also the capital, so it makes sense that more people want to go there. It is also a hub for everywhere east of Jakarta.

The cities of Sumatra aren’t interesting enough to support tourism

“Let’s go to Pekanbaru”, said no one ever. Sorry, my friends in Pekanbaru, but very few people are going to Pekanbaru, or pretty much any urban area in Sumatra, for a holiday.

No one goes to these places unless they are on business or are visiting family. The depressing fact is that Indonesian cities are not very interesting.

This is something I think about often, and a separate article is in my draft folder. I think about this in terms of Indonesia’s proposed 10 New Bali scheme. The idea is to promote 10 places across Indonesia as new tourism hubs, to try and spread the tourism dollars beyond Bali.

While this needs to happen, they need to make cities more livable and thus more interesting to visit. Make it so that cities have a nice urban environment that you want to linger in while visiting other regional attractions. That’s a topic for another time.

For the people of Sumatra, why go to another Sumatran city when you can go to KL or Penang across the strait?

Could rail travel replace air travel?

Sumatra is about the right size and has enough population to support a pan-island railway. This is, of course, easier said than done. There is the matter of paying for it, and getting enough funding from Jakarta, which is struggling to fund its first high-speed railway in Java.

The Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway is also showing how difficult it is to build a railway on an island with such rugged terrain.

A Trans-Sumatra Railway would be about the same length as the proposed North-South Express Railway in Vietnam. Vietnam is saying it will cost up to 60 billion USD, and that would serve a nation of 100 million people. Indonesia is now having doubts about extending the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway to Surabaya due to the cost. There are 150 million people living in Java, so that should be an obvious choice for HSR. If they can’t build it there, then Sumatra has no hope.

A high-speed railway from Banda Aceh or Medan to Bandar Lampung would be unlikely, so there would always be a need for air travel. It is the cities in between that would benefit from a semi-high-speed railway. There would be no need for flights from any combination of the major cities with a high-speed railway.