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Going to Bogor and Puncak over the festive days, we were taking Lion Air to get to Jakarta from Bali and back. Apart from being competitively priced (around Rp. 350.000 one way/person), I was positively surprised about the Lion Air flights.
The plane used was a spanking-new Boeing 737-900ER, one of the newest mid-range/single-aisle planes of Boeing. This youngest member of the 737 family only received its FAA certificate in the US in April 2007. And guess who was the launching partner?
Wait a minute - Lion Air Indonesia launching partner for the 737-900ER?
Yep, that’s right! Something is definitely going on here.
It doesn’t go without saying, that there is something positive to report about Indonesian Airlines. After all we had at least 1 airlines catastrophe every 6 months for the last couple of years. There was even talk of closure of some of the incident-stricken airlines earlier, but some money changed hands and nothing happened - business as usual in Indonesia.
Even Adam Air is still airborne.
So I had to inquire a bit more about Lion Air’s setup and strategy for Asia. Turns out there is a lot to look forward to:
First they are a Jakarta-based low-cost carrier. Currently Lion Air has a fleet of roughly 40 planes of more older caliber, like 16x MD82, 5x MD90, 2x Boeing 737-300, 10x Boeing 737-400, but also already 7 of the new Boeing 737-900ER. The ‘ER’ stands for ‘Extended Range’ and has an additional 5 km (or 500 nautical miles) as well as a lighter body and additional fuel tanks compared to the original 737.
So is it really true that Lion Air was the launching partner for that plane?
Just look at this Boeing page and get it straight from the horses mouth. The first one was delivered in April 2007, with a special paint scheme that combined both the Boeing and Lion Air colors, with the Lion Air lion on the vertical stabilizer and the Boeing livery colors on the fuselage. You can see a picture of it to the left.
Lion Air initially ordered the very first manufactured 30 planes, but stocked the order up to 122 pieces at last June’s Paris Air show with a total order volume of USD 8.5 Mrd per list price.
Wow - 122 new planes, when they just had 33 planes early 2007?
They are clearly ambitious or simply have big plans.
So what’s really up?
Both!
I learned that Lion Air wants to become one of the leading regional airlines in Asia. Only 60 planes of their then 150 planes are scheduled to fly domestic routes in Indonesia, the rest will all go international between 2010-2013. They want to extend their routes from a mere domestic flight plan with only 2 international jumps to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur currently to many further destinations in Asia - amongst those Thailand, Hong Kong, Australia, Bangladesh and other locations in Malaysia.
Will they even go for long-haul routes as well?
Maybe the break-out to international markets is their only chance for survival, as the Indonesian market is pretty saturated and under huge competitive pressure - Lion Air was even forced to park some of its planes, due to lack of passengers a few years back.
But now they want to recruit an additional 300 pilots and 400 stewardesses by 2010 as well - with all pilot training done in Australia to ensure international standards.
The financing for the new planes was arranged by the Export-Import Bank, a body owned by the Government of the USA. Another interesting fact is that the CEO of Lion Air stated that they are interested in the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner as well.
A new regional force besides Air Asia, Tiger Airways and Jet Star/ValueAir in the making?
It certainly looks so. That’s definitely good news for Indonesia and regional air travel in Asia. Let’s hope that they are not simply blinded by the success of Air Asia and Tiger Air and will substantially improve their maintenance regime as well:
After all it was a Lion Air plane (MD 90), which lost a 3m part from the exhaust system during takeoff from Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta airport just on 6th December 2007. Thankfully nobody was harmed, but it was said it was due to poor maintenance from the ‘workshop facility’. And in November 2004 they had a crash of a MD80 in Solo/Java, killing 26 people among the 146 passengers and 7 crew. They blamed bad weather for that one.
Another serious incident with a Lion Air plane was back in February 2005, when an older plane (MD28) skidded off the runway on Sulawesi Island due to a blown tire, again without casualites.
It seems that it’s best to avoid their older MD (Macdonell Douglas) planes and stick to the Boeings.
By the way: The reason of our trip was a visit to Bogor and Puncak, close to Jakarta. I will put another post with some pictures together about Puncak - which is a famed weekend-getaway from Jakarta; it features a not-so-typical climate and atmosphere.
Watch this space, it won’t take that long this time. 
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just today, lion announced to add 56 more boeing 737 900ER to the total of 178..what a great…
then, what do u think about their invasion?
asia and australia only? or perhaps europe and africa?
ceudah - I saw that as well in the newspapers. Interesting, isn’t it? Let me try to check with them what is the higher plan behind it…there must be some real faith in management and business plan by investors who grant such sums of money to an Indonesian Airlines, given the track record of airlines here.
i read rusdi kirana profile,and its really interesting…
yes, it must be a big plan behind it..hope they success with lower price but high safety standard…
I’m Indonesian and a doemestic frequent flier, all of those low-fare airlines, I think Mandala is the meanest. They don’t even attempt to serve their passengers with a plastic cup of mineral water they way the second meanest airlines (Adam, Citilink) do. Want to know how much a cup of mineral water costs at Carrefour stores? Rp 210 (about 20 US$ cents) So, when you re planning to fly on a Mandala 60-minute flight, make sure you stuff yourself with a bottle of 600-ml mineral water in case you need to drink every ten minutes, otehrwise you ‘ll grin to hear the voiceover the cabin crew makes “For your information, we sell all kinds of drinks you may need. Please contact one of our flight attendants. Thank you”
That doesn’t sound so pleasant, Tatyana! Bet that competition among the Indonesian airlines is really taking its tolls.
ceudah - oh yeah, I sent a request for more information regarding their business strategies via their contact form on their website to Lion Air. So far - 10 days after - no reply yet. Let’s see if something comes back from their PR department…
[...] seems that the majority of airlines got the message, with Garuda and especially Lion Air doing what they can to overhaul their operations and financial management. They purchased new [...]
We’d better to hope all d’best things about at all ..
But , just for special reminder for Mr Rusdi Kirana or another Lion air’s owner that LION AIR it will be nothing as long as Management never change to develop about bad outsourching resourcement system as they do. Please check to inside.
I was the leader team for reservation and ticketting departement on Head office of LION AIR at central of Jakarta . They are not just really LOW COST CARRIER but also LOWEST COST SALARY ,
maybe , they never had enough change money due aircraft payment .
bonni erlangga - that is interesting to learn! Let’s see if they will revamp the whole salary structure as well, to get it to a competitive level.
I think, it’s better to have ‘limited’ number of airlines operating domestically, instead of granting many. Lion, Mandala, Batavia, Airfast, Citilink, is enuff. Sriwijaya, Wings are out of consideration.
Garuda is in, of course.
Do not fly with Lion Air. I recently bought a pair of tickets 2 months ahead of my planed departure date. A month before departure date I tried to cancel the tickets, the only way to talk to someone was to call their Indonesia office. Cost aside, they can’t communicate in English. And by the time I got someone on the line that could barely speak English, they gave me the run around. Finally one of them managed to find my booking details, after 10 mins of trying to get her to understand the words coming out of my mouth. “Siska” asked me to call her back as she checked my details, I did as suggested, bad mistake. They avoided my calls after that. They picked up and hang up my calls for the entire night. When I call from my mobile, miraculously, I manage to talk to someone again, but the moment I ask for someone who spoke English, silence….., and they stop picking up calls from my mobile number thereafter.