Within two days at Sultan Hasanuddin International Airport in South Sulawesi, two Indonesian military aircraft left the paved runway. On 24 August an Air Force Sukhoi Su-30 overran or departed the surface of runway 13 and came to rest on grass beside the strip. On 25 August a Navy NC-212 Cassa, landing on runway 03, left the centreline after a right main tyre went flat and ended about 26 metres off the edge. Crews were reported unhurt. Civil operations continued on the alternate runway while each aircraft was recovered. Two excursions at the same joint-use field in consecutive days are not a coincidence to be shrugged off as military business.
Sultan Hasanuddin is both a commercial international airport and a major military flying station. Civil passengers and scheduled airlines share pavement, drainage, friction characteristics and emergency response with fighters and transport aircraft that operate to different weights, speeds and mission profiles. When a military aircraft becomes disabled, the civil side depends on the second runway, on how quickly the wreckage or the airframe can be moved, and on whether the surface itself remains usable. A single-runway joint field would have shut commercial traffic for hours.
The questions that follow are the same ones civilian regulators ask after a runway excursion. What was the surface condition and contamination? Had friction been measured recently, especially after rain? Was drainage adequate for tropical weather? Were tyre, brake and landing-gear conditions consistent with the aircraft’s utilisation? How long did recovery take, and who owns the specialist towing and lifting equipment? Military investigations may remain internal. The public interest does not. Civil flights use the same concrete.
The pattern is regional. Indonesia, India, the Philippines and other Southeast Asian states operate many airfields where air force or navy units share runways with scheduled airlines, charters and general aviation. Investment often follows the passenger terminal and the civil movement count. Runway friction testing, rubber-deposit removal, groove maintenance, overrun areas and disabled-aircraft recovery kits can lag on the military side or fall between two budgets. Monsoon and tropical rainfall make those gaps more dangerous. An excursion that would be a serious incident at a purely civil airport should not be treated as a routine training mishap because the operator wears a uniform.
Hasanuddin’s two runways limited the damage this week. They do not answer whether the surface, the tyres, the procedures or the recovery system would have withstood a third event, or a similar event at a single-runway base. Shared airfields need shared standards: published friction programmes, joint emergency plans, transparent occurrence reporting and recovery capability measured in minutes, not hours. Military aviation will keep using civilian runways. Those runways should be held to the same physical and organisational standard the civil system already claims to apply.