Asia - SE Asias other new airport. SUB

With Suvarnabuhmi stealing the spotlights as far as new airports go in Asia, Surabaya has quietly opened the new Juanda airport they have been working on for quite some time. While certainly not even in the same league as BKK I was pleasantly surprised when upon landing in Surabaya a couple of days ago, my plane turned left instead of right and pulled up to a brand new terminal building. It's actually pretty decent by Indonesian standards. The old terminal was functional but still had a bit of that third world charm to it. The new airport actually feels like a pretty modern airport. nothing to fancy but everything was working smoothly and it still had that new airport smell to it.

The floors were much shinier than Suvarnabuhmi too.

With Suvarnabuhmi stealing the spotlights as far as new airports go in Asia, Surabaya has quietly opened the new Juanda airport they have been working on for quite some time. While certainly not even in the same league as BKK I was pleasantly surprised when upon landing in Surabaya a couple of days ago, my plane turned left instead of right and pulled up to a brand new terminal building. It's actually pretty decent by Indonesian standards. The old terminal was functional but still had a bit of that third world charm to it. The new airport actually feels like a pretty modern airport. nothing to fancy but everything was working smoothly and it still had that new airport smell to it.

The floors were much shinier than Suvarnabuhmi too.

I'm going to Surabaya next month and I'm looking forward to seeing it in person. I've seen pictures of the new airport and it does look good.

Did you fly domestic or international? How was the arrival process (i.e from deplaning to baggage claim to getting out)?

Interesting. Any word on whether Indonesia is investing in a new terminal for DPS-Denpasar/Bali? As the gateway to one of Indonesia's prime earners of foreign exchange, you'd think DPS wouldn't be such a dump and would get some TLC.

Theres also a new terminal at KCH Kuching, Sarawak.

Modern but doesnt feel as "cold" as KUL. Not bad for a regional airport.

Good to hear of this new airport opened up in my birth city :D

I'm going to Surabaya next month and I'm looking forward to seeing it in person. I've seen pictures of the new airport and it does look good.

Did you fly domestic or international? How was the arrival process (i.e from deplaning to baggage claim to getting out)?

I only made a domestic arrival so far. I'll make an international departure in a couple of days and report. Regular gates instead of walking from the plane. Walk down to baggage, collect bags and depart. Pretty basic fuctional airport. Taxi Prima desk is just outside the exit and they have added a couple of other taxi companies I don't recognize. There was a bit of a queue for taxies that I had not seen before at SUB but maybee I just arrived at a busy time. There was no apparent inefficency in the system. It was just busy. In any case the queue moved quickly. Garunda had a domestic lounge and there was also another lounge which listed about 30 ways you could get in. I arrived on Adam Air and qualified for none of those ways. The airport layout is of the basic, baggage screening and WTMD, then check in, then upstairs to a common area with shops where arrivals and departures mix and then final security screening at individual departure lounge/holding pens at the individual gates.

Good to hear of this new airport opened up in my birth city :D

Nice city. I've always liked Surabaya. For a city this size everyone is quite friendly. Allot of good people around here. Just has a more friendly vibe than Jakarta.

Nice city. I've always liked Surabaya. For a city this size everyone is quite friendly. Allot of good people around here. Just has a more friendly vibe than Jakarta.
You quoted the wrong person :p

Anyway .. the last time I went there was about 15 years ago. My family moved to Jakarta and when I visited earlier this year I went to Bali instead :(
Perhaps next year as I still have relatives there.

Hm I didn't even hear about this at all. So any pictures? How did they pick SUB for a new airport? DPS is the gateway to Indo. Well that should have one of the better airports.

I'm still waiting for MES to get their new airport....whenever that'll be.

You quoted the wrong person :p

Opp's :D Sorry about that. I ment to quote the right person. While I have nice things to say about Surabaya, the internet conectivity kinda sux around here. I timed out after writing my reply and copied and pasted without re-proofreading. I'll fix that. :D


Hm I didn't even hear about this at all. So any pictures? How did they pick SUB for a new airport? DPS is the gateway to Indo. Well that should have one of the better airports.

It was a total surprize to me too. I had seen the construction from the plane window a few trips in the past but had no idea it was open until I arrived and saw planes parked at the new terminal as we taxied. I was seated in 1A and ask the flight attendent seated across from me how long it had been open. She said 1 1/2 weeks and said it was her first time to see it open as well. For the size of the city SUB was way behind DPS and an upgrade was overdue. I'll try to snap some pics when I depart.

Hm I didn't even hear about this at all. So any pictures? How did they pick SUB for a new airport? DPS is the gateway to Indo. Well that should have one of the better airports.

I'm still waiting for MES to get their new airport....whenever that'll be.

DPS Airport definitely could use some remodeling. I think Indonesia is currently building or planning on building several airports throughout the country, but I didn't see DPS on the list. They are planning on building Terminal 3 in CGK and actually also Terminal 2 in SUB, because the new airport in SUB is already over capacity as soon as it opened.

Opp's :D Sorry about that. I ment to quote the right person. While I have nice things to say about Surabaya, the internet conectivity kinda sux around here. I timed out after writing my reply and copied and pasted without re-proofreading. I'll fix that. :D

LOL don't worry about it .. I was just busting your chop. However, good call on blaming the error on SUB's internet connection :p

After making an international departure today I must take back a few of the nice things I said about SUB. :D . I arrived, had my bag x-rayed and entered the international check in hall. Turns out it is accually smaller than the domestic check-in hall. I supose that makes sense for Surabaya. It was fairly busy but I checked the fancy new flat screen monitor and it showed my AirAsia flight but showed it not checking in yet which was odd since it was suposed to leave in 90 minutes. I had a seat and waited for my flight to start checking in. After a while I noticed the lines ajacent to a Malaysia Air flight that was checking in had blank monitors rather than the Malaysia Air displays on the rest of that flights counters so I investigated and indeed it was my flight which had been checking in all along, with no signage or indication those were the counters whatsoever. The display in the lobby still showed it not checking in yet. In any case I joined the back of the line, eventually checked in and headed upstairs to imigration.

As I left there was still no indication or signage anywhere that my flight had even started checking in. I expected to pay departure tax but instead there was a departure tax 'like' booth that said "fisal check" on a paper sign and the guy there just looked at my passport and sent me on to immigration. There was no line at all for immigration and I cleared there in seconds.

Now to find my gate. I looked at my boarding pass. No gate number there. I looked for a monitor. No gate number there. It's accually fairly small and finally I encounted an AirAsia employee kind of wandering around outside the secure area collecting boarding passes. I handed the portion of mine over as ask and was directed to security where I encountered another AirAsia employee collecting departure tax tickets. I knew that would come up somewhere. I did not have one. Turns out that before the "fisal check", before immigration is a completely unmarked booth where you pay the departure tax. I had seen it but it had no sign on it whatsoever and did not look like anything that concerned me when I passed the first time. I'm thinking the fisal officer should be checking that when he does his fisal check. So back to immigration, ask the guy if I can go out backwards to pay my departure tax. No problem, many others were doing the same. Paid my tax got my stamp walked back through immigration with out any bother, cleared security and arrived at the gate about the second every one somehow jumped up without a boarding anouncement and out of pure luck I was first in line.

For AirAsia in Indonesia boarding was remarkably orderly. I have seen near riots bofore boarding AirAsia in Indonesia. I grabbed the exit row seat and quickly the plane filled, baggage was loaded and everything was looking good for an on time departure. Then we waited. Departure time passed and over the next 15 minutes 5-10 more passengers trickled in including people who I recognized as checking in way before me. I guess they had to send out search partiees for the missing passengers. about 15 minutes after departure time the announced that immigration had not collected all the departure cards and anyone who still had theirs please hand it over. Then they started checking passports to be sure they had all been departure stamped. FINALLY 30 minutes late after what easily could have been an on time departure they accounted for everyones immigration status closed the door pushed off and we had a nice flight.

Sooooooo. It appears we have fairly signifigant issues with nonexistant singnage and announcements, locals wandering off and getting lost between immigration and security, and immigration not working right (although I did clear immigration very fast) :D

I'm sure they are working out the little flaws :D

Thanks for the report!!! It's very informative and helpful for me who will be flying to SUB in a couple of weeks.

there is talk of connectin the airport to the railway line which goes nearby

After making an international departure today I must take back a few of the nice things I said about SUB. :D . I arrived, had my bag x-rayed and entered the international check in hall. Turns out it is accually smaller than the domestic check-in hall. I supose that makes sense for Surabaya. It was fairly busy but I checked the fancy new flat screen monitor and it showed my AirAsia flight but showed it not checking in yet which was odd since it was suposed to leave in 90 minutes. I had a seat and waited for my flight to start checking in. After a while I noticed the lines ajacent to a Malaysia Air flight that was checking in had blank monitors rather than the Malaysia Air displays on the rest of that flights counters so I investigated and indeed it was my flight which had been checking in all along, with no signage or indication those were the counters whatsoever. The display in the lobby still showed it not checking in yet. In any case I joined the back of the line, eventually checked in and headed upstairs to imigration.

As I left there was still no indication or signage anywhere that my flight had even started checking in. I expected to pay departure tax but instead there was a departure tax 'like' booth that said "fisal check" on a paper sign and the guy there just looked at my passport and sent me on to immigration. There was no line at all for immigration and I cleared there in seconds.

Now to find my gate. I looked at my boarding pass. No gate number there. I looked for a monitor. No gate number there. It's accually fairly small and finally I encounted an AirAsia employee kind of wandering around outside the secure area collecting boarding passes. I handed the portion of mine over as ask and was directed to security where I encountered another AirAsia employee collecting departure tax tickets. I knew that would come up somewhere. I did not have one. Turns out that before the "fisal check", before immigration is a completely unmarked booth where you pay the departure tax. I had seen it but it had no sign on it whatsoever and did not look like anything that concerned me when I passed the first time. I'm thinking the fisal officer should be checking that when he does his fisal check. So back to immigration, ask the guy if I can go out backwards to pay my departure tax. No problem, many others were doing the same. Paid my tax got my stamp walked back through immigration with out any bother, cleared security and arrived at the gate about the second every one somehow jumped up without a boarding anouncement and out of pure luck I was first in line.

For AirAsia in Indonesia boarding was remarkably orderly. I have seen near riots bofore boarding AirAsia in Indonesia. I grabbed the exit row seat and quickly the plane filled, baggage was loaded and everything was looking good for an on time departure. Then we waited. Departure time passed and over the next 15 minutes 5-10 more passengers trickled in including people who I recognized as checking in way before me. I guess they had to send out search partiees for the missing passengers. about 15 minutes after departure time the announced that immigration had not collected all the departure cards and anyone who still had theirs please hand it over. Then they started checking passports to be sure they had all been departure stamped. FINALLY 30 minutes late after what easily could have been an on time departure they accounted for everyones immigration status closed the door pushed off and we had a nice flight.

Sooooooo. It appears we have fairly signifigant issues with nonexistant singnage and announcements, locals wandering off and getting lost between immigration and security, and immigration not working right (although I did clear immigration very fast) :D

I'm sure they are working out the little flaws :D

I was just in SUB airport (from and to CGK) a couple weeks ago and I think the airport looked really good. It looked like that they had fixed the signage problem, which was a huge issue when airport was just opened. When I was there, the signage was quite clear. The waiting areas seemed to be too crowded with people going to different destionations. I liked how I was able to look at the apron and the runway very clearly from the inside of the terminal.

The exterior of the airport was actually quite nice, especially the area/section between the international and domestic terminals.

I was just in SUB airport (from and to CGK) a couple weeks ago and I think the airport looked really good. It looked like that they had fixed the signage problem, which was a huge issue when airport was just opened. When I was there, the signage was quite clear. The waiting areas seemed to be too crowded with people going to different destionations. I liked how I was able to look at the apron and the runway very clearly from the inside of the terminal.

The exterior of the airport was actually quite nice, especially the area/section between the international and domestic terminals.Good to hear. Did you take any pictures?

Interesting. Any word on whether Indonesia is investing in a new terminal for DPS-Denpasar/Bali? As the gateway to one of Indonesia's prime earners of foreign exchange, you'd think DPS wouldn't be such a dump and would get some TLC.

I think the CI longe in DPS is superb, its a multi shared lounge will full waiter service

Good to hear. Did you take any pictures?

Yes, I took some pictures of the airport. But, I have an old digital camera and the pictures didn't turn out quite right. :(

Yes, I took some pictures of the airport. But, I have an old digital camera and the pictures didn't turn out quite right. :(

It's all good. I saw the pictures from the link you sent me in pm ;)