Overwhelmed by massive arrivals, Bali Airport hopes to install Immigration autogate by 2018

Immigration can hardly keep up with the massive amount of people coming through Bali Ngurah Rai International Airport everyday, so plans to install some autogates are in the works.

The government has been pushing so hard to get foreign arrivals up, with the aim of meeting ambitious annual targets, but the island’s infrastructure isn’t moving quite as quickly.

In the past two months—no doubt, peak season in Bali—as many as 17,000 foreign travelers are coming through the airport a day, according to head of Immigration Class I Ngurah Rai, Ari Budijanto.

Making it even harder on Immigration staff is that flights often land close together, with waves of travelers coming in at around the same time.

“The problem is the arrivals are not spread out, but occur only at certain hours,” Budijanto told Tribun Bali on Tuesday.

For instance, from around 9-11am, around 10 aircraft carrying about 3,500 passengers arrive.

And increasing the amount of people even more is that plans are getting bigger. The average flight used to contain 150 passengers, but now wide-body aircraft carry around 300-350 passengers, significantly increasing the volume of people arriving in Bali at one time, says Budijanto.

“Not to mention in the afternoon from 3pm to 5pm, about 15 wide-bodied aircraft plus charter planes, about 19-20 aircraft come in. Imagine, within two hours, our officers must conduct checks on 4,500 foreigners,” Budjianto added.

There are currently 26 Immigration counters at Ngurah Rai Airport, broken down into 13 counters at arrivals and 13 at departures. Each counter has two Immigration officials, according to Budijanto.

To better deal with the heavy flows of foreigners coming through Immigration, Budijanto says he hopes automated gates can be installed.

“Hopefully by the end of the year, the autogates can be procured, so as early as 2018 they can be in use,” Budijanto said.

As with every big project in Bali, like the underpass meant to be dug out from under the roundabout in front of the airport, the big eyesore sculpture construction at GWK, and the cruise ship terminal in Benoa, the hope is the autogate will be ready for the 2018 IMF and World Bank meeting set for Oct. 2018.