NABIRE, CENTRAL PAPUA – For almost two years Nabire Regency has been designated as the capital of Central Papua Province, to be precise since June 30, 2022 and based on Law Number 15 of 2022 Central Papua is a New Autonomous Region (DOB) or a province that was split from the mother province of Papua along with two other provinces namely South Papua and Papua Mountains.
As the center of the Central Papua Province Government and infrastructure development in Nabire began to be intensified to support the achievement of accelerated development and community welfare. One of the concerns of the central government is the construction of a new airport to strengthen transportation access from Nabire to areas that are difficult to reach by land.
As one of the national strategic projects in providing public facilities to serve the community of air transportation service users, the construction of Douw Aturure Airport was carried out by the Ministry of Transportation through the Directorate General of Civil Aviation in 2019 on the orders of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) and completed in 2023.
The airport was named Douw Aturure which is an honorary title for former Regent Isaias Douw from the customary elders of the coastal communities of Nabire Regency and Douw Aturure Airport is located in Karadiri, Wanggar District, built to replace the function of the old airport in downtown Nabire.
President Jokowi said that in addition to functioning to facilitate logistics distribution and community mobility, Douw Aturure Airport is expected to reduce disparities and trigger the economy and boost tourism in Central Papua, “The Douw Aturure Airport that we inaugurated will improve connectivity in Central Papua, increase the mobility of goods, and open up many opportunities to trigger the growth of new economies,” President Jokowi said.
The construction of Douw Aturure Airport is a collaboration between the Central and Regional Governments, with a budget of Rp 671.54 billion sourced from the state budget, “it is hoped that people will increasingly want to use airplanes so that the number of those interested in using airplanes increases,” said Indonesian Minister of Transportation Budi Karya Sumadi.
Three months after being inaugurated by President Jokowi, Douw Aturure Airport was officially fully operational on February 22, 2024. The airport was built with a modern design and at first glance the terminal is almost similar to Komodo Airport in Labuan Bajo, West Manggarai, East Nusa Tenggara. The airport building design carries the concept of local wisdom with a simple modern touch, taking the concept of trees adopted from Papuan tropical forest trees and the terminal roof cover adopted from Papuan tropical forests and paper airplanes.
The Douw Aturure Airport runway is 1600 meters long or 200 meters longer than the old airport, with a width of 30 meters. The apron size is 367.5 x 100 meters so that it can be landed by ATR 72 type aircraft. For the passenger terminal, the airport has a terminal area of 6,320 m2 which can accommodate a capacity of up to 287,000 passengers per year and the plan for Douw Aturure Airport will still be developed again so that it can serve wide-body aircraft such as Boeing or Airbus.
Regulation of the Ministry of Transportation of the Republic of Indonesia Douw Aturure Airport has met the standard aviation security and safety requirements with the completion of Airport Security Program (ASP) documents for airport security, as well as AEP (Airport Emergency Plan) documents for flight safety.
Douw Aturure Airport serves domestic routes of Wings Air aircraft with destinations:
- Nabire-Jayapura PP,
- Nabire-Timika PP,
- Nabire-Manokwari PP.
There are 15 pioneer routes served, namely:
- Nabire – Moanamani (PP): 2 times,
- Nabire – Bilorai (PP): 3 times,
- Nabire – Faowi (PP): 2 times,
- Nabire – Mulia (PP): 3 times,
- Nabire – Ilu (PP): 2 times,
- Nabire – Ilaga (PP): 3 times,
- Nabire – Enarotali (PP): 3 times,
- Nabire – Sinak (PP): 2 times,
- Nabire – Waghete (PP): 3 times,
- Waghete – Kapiraya (PP) : 2 times,
- Nabire – Beoga (PP): 1 time,
- Nabire – Wasior (PP): 1 time,
- Nabire – Dagai (PP): 1 time,
- Nabire – Utarom (PP): 1 time,
- Nabire – Pogapa (PP): 1 time.
All passenger aircraft operating at the new Nabire airport can carry cargo and the aircraft has two functions, depending on the existing cargo and currently there are 10 aircraft units including helicopters operating from Douw Aturure Airport.
