TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: PT Merpati Nusantara Airlines said on Thursday that for the past week company revenues were positive. Its new director, Rudi Setyopurnomo, deemed it positive after the losses the company had suffered for five consecutive years until the beginning of this year. “Operating profits are positive. It’s Rp 500 million per day. But this is not happening consistently because the system is not established yet,” he said at a hearing session with House Commission XI on Thursday, June 21, 2012. He said that Merpati was now ready to implement a recovery program. The program can ensure profits until the end of the year. "We’d like to increase the profits in order to pay non-operating costs,” he said. At the moment, non-operating costs cannot be paid yet due to recurring losses. However, the House Commission doubts Merpati’s projections. They still believe that the state-owned airline will not be successfulrealizing its yearly projections through the commercial flight business. The Commission suggests that Merpati run pioneer flights only in order to play a positive role for the nation and stop being a burden to the State Budget. It can, for example, strengthen the connectivity integration in Indonesian territories. According to Commission’s Deputy Head Harry Aziz Azhar, Merpati has a different function thanGaruda Indonesia. “Merpati tends to come across problems when entering commercial flights,” he said Harry gives as an example, Merpati can later be converted into something like PT Kereta Api dan PT Pelni whose approaches are in the form of public service obligation (PSO). “It shouldn’t be about profits. Assistance is based on the number of subsidized passengers,” he said. In 2011, Merpati’s revenues were merely Rp 1.6 trillion of the planned Rp 3 trillion.This impacted on operating losses of Rp 450 billion with total losses in 2011 of Rp750 billion. The reason for this was the declining occupancy rate to a mere 74percent in 2011. M. ANDI PERDANA