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Govt spares Lion Air, AirAsia but warns of tougher sanctions
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Lion Air planes are seen parked on the air side of Terminal 1 at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on May 12. (kompas.com/Andri Donnal Putera)
T
he Transportation Ministry has decided to spare low-cost carriers Lion Air and Indonesia AirAsia from ground-handling permit suspensions, but threatened to promptly revoke the permits completely if their managements failed to improve operations.
The ministry initially planned to freeze the permits following an incident at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on May 10 when a Lion Air bus driver transferred passengers from an international flight to a domestic terminal, leading to 16 foreigners initially skipping immigration checks.
A similar incident happened with AirAsia on May 16 at Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali, which raised concerns over the impact of the mismanagement of the airline industry on national security.
The ground-handling permits were supposed to have been suspended starting on Wednesday until the ministry’s investigation into the incidents were complete. However, the investigations, which commenced on May 14, finished on May 22 and resulted in six recommendations for Lion Air and seven recommendations for AirAsia.
The ministry's spokesperson Hemi Pamuraharjo said the director general for air transportation decided not to impose the sanction of permit suspensions, but would go straight to revoke the airlines' ground-handling permits if they failed to implement the recommendations.
“Lion Air has 30 days to follow the recommendations relating to operational services following the investigation. Until then the ground-handling activities can run as usual," he told thejakartapost.com on Wednesday.
The company, he continued, had to make an evaluation of its ground-handling standard operating procedures (SOPs), had to evaluate the ground-handling management and supervise the revised SOPs, train the relevant staff, and must not hand over the service to a third party.
If it failed to implement those recommendations, the airline would have its ground-handling business permit revoked immediately. "The ministry decided to tighten the sanctions on Lion Air," he asserted. (ags)
