Indonesia’s Transportation Ministry has taken action after 47 passengers coming into Bali from Singapore were mistakenly dropped at the domestic terminal, nearly able to waltz into the country without going through immigration.
Thankfully the mistake was realized shortly after the AirAsia bus dropped the QZ 509 passengers, so the travelers were recalled and redirected to immigration at the international terminal. But can you imagine what would happen if the mistake wasn’t realized til much later?
Because of the totally questionable incident, in which there was an apparent miscommunication with the bus driver, ground handling services for the airline are off limits for now at Ngurah Rai International Airport.
Lion Air is now also barred at the moment for handling ground services at Soekarno-Hatta Airport after a very similar incident in Jakarta last week—and even worse for that flight, there is still reportedly a Hungarian traveler from that terminal mix-up who never reported back to immigration.
“The sanctions are issued so that all parties will be more careful when it comes to the safety of passengers,” said Suprasetyo, Director-General of Air Transportation at the Transport Ministry in a press conference on Wednesday, as quoted by Channel News Asia.
The airlines thankfully won’t have to change their flight schedules (that would be way too chaotic if we had a huge flight rescheduling debacle on our hands) and have been given five days to find a ground services operator, reports said.
