Lion Air CEO says passengers down less than 5% in November following JT-610 crash

A Lion Air plane in Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta Airport. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
A Lion Air plane in Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta Airport. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

What exactly caused the crash of Lion Air flight JT-610, which slammed into the ocean on October 29 and killed all 189 on-board, is still yet to be determined and so the Indonesian government has so far refrained from sanctioning the budget airline. It’s also unclear what impact the crash will have on Lion Air’s business, but, according to its CEO, the tragic disaster has done little to deter passengers from flying with them.

In an interview with CNN Indonesia yesterday, Lion Air CEO Edward Sirait said that the number of passengers that flew his airline in November was down less than 5% from November of 2017, a decline that he described as “not significant”.




Edward would not speculate that the cause of the decline was due to the crash of JT 610, but he did admit that it was their lowest number of passengers in November that the rapidly expanding airline had seen in several years.

The CEO also reiterated news from last week that Lion was considering cancelling their outstanding orders with Boeing, the manufacturer of the Boeing 737 MAX model aircraft that flew JT-610, due to worsening relations caused by competing claims about which side bears responsibility for the deadly crash.

Edward said Lion Air may still cancel its outstanding order for 190 Boeing jets, worth US$22 billion at list prices, but noted no final decisions have been made yet.

Last week’s preliminary report from investigators looking into the crash did not designate an official cause for the accident but advised the budget airline to improve its safety culture and better document repair work on its planes.

A major matter of contention is whether the plane should have been deemed airworthy before its doomed flight due to the recurrence a technical problem on its second to last flight. Investigators seemed to say that the plane was not airworthy during the report’s presentation but the next day they clarified to say that Lion Air had followed all proper procedure in designating it airworthy before its doomed flight.   



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