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Lion Air admits negligence caused flight delays
Lion Air, the countryâs largest domestic carrier, has admitted that negligence caused delays of up to five hours on several flights departing Soekarno-Hatta International Airport Thursday night
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ion Air, the country's largest domestic carrier, has admitted that negligence caused delays of up to five hours on several flights departing Soekarno-Hatta International Airport Thursday night.
The company had failed to have enough spare tires at the airport, thus flights were held up on four service routes: Jakarta'Padang, Jakarta'Makassar, Jakarta'Surabaya, and Jakarta'Batam.
'Just like our loyal customers, we are also disappointed by this case, especially for the passengers flying from Jakarta to Padang because they had to wait for five hours,' Lion Air spokesman Edward Sirait said on Friday.
'As an operator, we never want a situation like this to happen because it not only costs the passengers but also us as a company. We admit that there was negligence on our end because we did not prepare for the Idul Adha [Day of Sacrifice] rush that lasted from Saturday [last week] to Wednesday.'
He said that the Boeing 737-900 Extended Range (ER) aircraft operated for the four flights had needed their tires changed immediately. The company, however, didn't have enough spares on site.
According to civil aviation regulation, after 180 to 200 landings, every plane must have its tires changed.
The only exception is if a pilot requests the tires of an aircraft be changed before 180 landings.
Passengers were incensed because they were scheduled to depart from Soekarno-Hatta to Padang, Makassar, Surabaya and Batam at between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Thursday, yet they ended up leaving around midnight and arriving at their destinations after 3 a.m. on Friday.
Edward said that the company had paid total compensation of Rp 3 billion (US$264,000) to the some 1,200 passengers affected by the delays in accordance with Transportation Ministry regulation no. 77/2011 on airline responsibility.
Meanwhile, Transportation Ministry spokesman Bambang S. Ervan said that the ministry would summon the airline on Monday to get further details about this case.
'We will conduct a comprehensive evaluation of Lion Air, covering its operations, management and safety, in order to prevent this same case from happening again. Immediate corrective actions will be taken because the incident has caused concern among air travelers in Indonesia,' Bambang said.
He even urged the public and media to closely monitor the evaluation process since aviation was a business built on trust.
Moreover, an aviation expert who is also a former investigator at the National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT), Hana Simatupang, said that the regulator should freeze Lion Air's flight permit temporarily as a deterrent.
Hana also said that the government should be firm with the airline and not allow it to expand aggressively until it was fully prepared to do so.
'The government should not let Lion Air continue disadvantaging its customers. I am afraid that this habit of negligence will spread to other airlines in the future,' she said.
Rage in the air
Oct. 1, 2013: A passenger on a Lion Air flight, serving the Manado-Jakarta route, forced open one of the plane's emergency exits, due to excessive heat in the cabin, when the aircraft was ready for take-off on the runway at Sam Ratulangi International Airport in Manado, North Sulawesi.
Sept. 1, 2013: Angry protests were staged by hundreds of Lion Air passengers when the airline's management provided no clarification or information about a number of its flights that had been delayed at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Cengkareng, Banten.
July 15, 2011: Dozens of Lion Air passengers vented their anger at airline employees at Sultan Syarif Kasim II International Airport in Pekanbaru, Riau, after their luggage was lost.
Feb. 23, 2010: Lion Air passengers heading for Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi, and Mamuju, West Sulawesi, were stranded at the Sultan Hasanuddin International Airport in Makassar for two days after their plane suffered mechanical problems.
From various source
