T

he year has started badly for Lion Group.

Just a week into 2016, four Lion Air employees were arrested for allegedly stealing items from checked bags at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, while a Lion Air aircraft was forced into an emergency landing at Batam'€™s Hang Nadim airport en route to Jakarta from Pekanbaru.

An airline survey launched Wednesday included two of Lion Group'€™s airlines, Lion Air and full-service carrier Batik Air, among the top 10 least-safe airlines in the world '€” although the survey excluded many countries and included only 407 major airlines.

Also recently, Lion Group saw the revocation of several flight slots for both airlines after failing to use the slots for 21 consecutive days.

A recent inspection by the Transportation Ministry also showed that Lion Air scored below the acceptable score of 60 percent on delay management for three consecutive months, meaning it had failed to handle or settle customers'€™ complaints on flight delays.

'€œWe'€™ve given them their first warning, and they will get three months before we reevaluate them,'€ said the ministry'€™s outgoing air transportation director, Muzaffar Ismail.

If Lion Air, the country'€™s largest private carrier, still fails to comply with delay-management standard operating procedure, the ministry has vowed to take gradual steps to ban the airline from issuing new routes, with the most severe sanction being revocation of the company'€™s commercial business license (SIUP).

Lion Air, owned by politically wired Rusdi Kirana, the 12th richest person in Indonesia according to Forbes, saw massive delays from Feb. 18 to 20 last year that left around 2,000 passengers stranded, paralyzed Terminal 3 at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta and infuriated passengers, some of whom vandalized Lion Air facilities in anger.

The situation was worsened by the fact that Lion Air was unable to pay refunds to the passengers, saying that no staff were available and no banks were open during the Chinese New Year holiday.

Muzaffar said that even though ministerial regulation no. 89/2015 on delay management had not been issued at that time, the ministry had formed a special team to audit the airline and make recommendations. The ministry also temporarily froze nine routes flown by Lion Air, including one connecting Makassar, South Sulawesi, to Jayapura, Papua.

At the press conference, the ministry also mooted freezing the Batik Air route connecting Jakarta and Yogyakarta after one of its planes slid off the runway at Adisucipto International Airport in November, reportedly after attempting to land during a downpour.

The ministry has also frozen the license of the three crew members involved in alleged drug use in December; their licenses will be revoked if they are found guilty.

However, a complaint by a passenger on a Denpasar to Makassar flight that the aircraft door had not been shut off properly, forcing the aircraft to return to base, could not be proven as a violation on the part of Lion Air.

Despite its problems, Lion Air remains the preference of passengers flying on a budget, with a hefty market share of around 40 percent.

'€œIt'€™s easy [for Lion] to get license. Although it is not yet mature, faces lots of delays, it continues to be able to add routes,'€ criticized Chappy Hakim, aviation expert who is also the former Air Force chief of staff.

Lion Air general affairs director Edward Sirait said that the airline was committed to adhering to the ministry'€™s recommendations and improving its delay management.

Despite the warning from the ministry, the airline announced Wednesday that Lion Air Group, along with Batik Air and Wings Air, had received ISO 9001:2015 certificate on delay management from PT SQS Indonesia.

'€œBy getting this, we hope to provide a better service when handling any delays,'€ Edward said.