Lion Air, the country’s biggest domestic carrier, is the epitome of a budget airline with a long record of poor service and safety issues. But that has not dimmed the appetite of passengers to fly with the airline.

Lion Air maintained the largest market share in the domestic aviation sector last year, securing some 45 percent of 76.6 million domestic passengers, according to data released by the Transportation Ministry. Its closest rival, national flag carrier Garuda Indonesia, secured 38.2 percent of the market.

However, Lion Air’s consistently high market share came on the heels of a string of incidents last year, including persistent delays triggering chaos at several airports.

Last week alone, the airline was involved in two incidents stemming from mismanagement.

Some 300 of the airline’s pilots abruptly went on strike on May 10 to protest the late disbursement of their monthly accommodation allowances, causing delays at various airports, including at the major gateway Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali.

On the same day, the airline mistakenly transferred arriving passengers from an international flight to a domestic terminal after the driver of a bus carrying the passengers from a flight from Singapore thought they were from Padang, West Sumatra.

Alongside mismanagement woes, the airline has also racked up a troubling safety record. In April, Lion Air’s full service arm, Batik Air, clipped the wing of a TransNusa airplane on a runway. Late last year, one of its planes skidded off the runway in Adisucipto International Airport in Yogyakarta.

“We have told the Transportation Ministry that we are still needed by the people. Indonesians need to fly,” Lion Air operational director Daniel Putut said recently after a recent meeting with ministry officials to explain the incidents.

With the tagline “we make people fly”, Lion Air sells its tickets at remarkably low prices compared to its competitors, making the airline affordable to all walks of life.

Lion Air currently operates 183 flight routes both domestically and internationally, with a total of 500 daily flights, enabling the company to connect passengers with various corners of the archipelago.

By comparison, Indonesia Air Asia (IAA), a rival low-cost carrier, only operates 32 routes.

Lion Air is a part of the Lion Air Group together with Wings Air, Batik Air and Malindo Air, based in Malaysia, and Thai Lion Air, based in Thailand.

It is owned by businessman-politician Rusdi Kirana, the country’s 12th-richest person according to Forbes. Rusdi currently serves as deputy chairman of the National Awakening Party (PKB), a party that supports President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration.

Lion Air general affairs director Edward Sirait dismissed speculations that Rusdi’s powerful position in government had helped keep the airline afloat despite its poor safety and management record.

“Nobody is immune these days,” he said, adding that Lion Air had never been involved in any fatal accidents.

Suprasetyo, the Transportation Ministry’s director general of air transportation, stated that the ministry would impose stern sanctions on Lion Air on a “case-by-case basis” in a bid to force the airline to improve its services.

A series of warnings have been issued by the ministry after the airline scored below the acceptable 60 percent level for delay management procedures in January. This could eventually lead to the freezing of routes or even the revocation of business permits if no improvements are seen within three-month blocks.

But serious follow-up measures to the warnings are rare. The ministry only sanctioned Lion Air for the flight delay on May 10 by prohibiting it from opening a new route, a sanction that the airline said would not hurt much as it had no plan to open new routes in the near future.

Meanwhile, for the mistake of delivering passengers to the wrong terminal, Suprasetyo said the sanction would depend on an ongoing investigation.

Edward advised the government against clipping the airline’s operations, arguing that punitive measures could hurt the country’s investment climate.

“I am not saying that we should not be punished. People responsible for wrongdoing must be punished, but it should be done based on proper mechanisms and investigations,” he said.

Aviation expert Chappy Hakim warned that the protracted delays and safety concerns reflected weak airline management and the reality that the company had grown too quickly since its establishment in 1999.

He further argued that Lion Air’s owner should not be a part of the government as it constituted a conflict of interest and could deter regulators from properly enforcing the law.

“It can be seen from their track-record over the years. There’s something wrong with the management,” he said.
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Incidents involving Lion Air

Jan. 4, 2016 : Four Lion Air employees are arrested for allegedly stealing items from checked-in bags at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.

Jan. 5, 2016 : A Lion Air aircraft is forced into an emergency landing at Batam’s Hang Nadim airport en route to Jakarta from Pekanbaru.

Feb. 20, 2016 : Juanda International Airport in Sidoarjo, the airport serving Surabaya, East Java, is shut down for several hours after a Lion Air aircraft overshoots the runway.

May 10, 2016 : More than 300 Lion Air pilots go on strike, claiming the company has not paid their accommodation allowance, which should have been paid between May 4 and May 9.

Aug. 12, 2015 : A Lion Air flight from Jakarta to Ujung Pandang in South Sulawesi is forced to make an emergency landing at Juanda International Airport.

Nov. 14, 2015 : A passenger reports feeling uncomfortable when he hears a Lion Air pilot offering a widowed stewardess to passengers over the speakers during a flight from Surabaya, East Java, to the resort island of Bali.

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