Hundreds of Lion Air passengers, many of whom were scheduled to fly out of Jakarta yesterday, this morning reportedly blocked the entrance to the departure gates at Soekarno-Hatta’s Terminal 1A after long delays and uncertainties over when their flights would finally take off.
Winry, an affected passenger, told the media that his Lion Air flight to Bengkulu was initially scheduled to depart at 4:25pm yesterday.
“These are all passengers who have been waiting since last night. But there’s no update, so tempers are flaring,” he said, as quoted by Detik at 6am today.
According to Lion Air, five of the airline’s flights from Jakarta were delayed since yesterday because of operational issues.
“The main cause of these delays is an operational problem wherein we had to replace crews because of a delay [yesterday] afternoon, and some airplanes had technical issues, so we had to replace crews on flights to Lombok, Bengkulu, [two flights to] Surabaya, and Banjarmasin,” Lion Air General Director Edward Sirait wrote in a statement today.
“This morning we have, and we will, fly all the flights that were delayed since Sunday.”
Sirait added that the airline has given affected passengers compensation as required by law.
Lion Air’s Operations Director Daniel Putut said that the delays were also caused by dangerous weather conditions that developed around Indonesia. The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) said such a claim is plausible as there are patches of bad weather across Indonesia’s northern half that may not be conducive to flying.
“In locations north of the equator, from Sabang to Merauke there are many cloud build ups, such as in some parts of Sumatra, around Padang, Kalimantan and Maluku,” said Yunus Swarinto, deputy head of Meteorology at BMKG, as quoted by Detik today.
As of 8:10am, four of the delayed flights – excluding the flight to Lombok – have departed to their respective destinations.
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