Problem plagued airline Lion Air has been in the news a lot lately for the grief it has caused its passengers and the government. They were criticized most recently after one of their shuttles accidentally dropped the passengers from an international flight off at Jakarta’s domestic terminal, allowing them to bypass immigration. But shortly before that, they got in hot water over a pilot strike (caused by late payments) that led to huge delays across their network.
The Ministry of Transportation has taken Lion Air’s latest screw-ups quite seriously, with the company barred from operating its own ground handling services in Jakarta and prohibited from receiving any new route permits for the next six months.
Lion Air is apparently not taking their punishment lying down. But instead of fighting the Transport Ministry directly, it has decided to make it into a criminal matter by reporting the ministry to the police.
The company’s president, Edward Sirait, announced that Lion Group had specifically reported the Transport Ministry’s director general of air transportation, Suprasetyo, to National Police’s Criminal Investigation Unit on Monday.
How, you might ask, could sanctioning Lion Air for its problematic operations be made into a criminal matter? According to Edward, the ministry’s abused their authority under Article 421 of the Penal Code and Article 335 of the Criminal Code by issuing its sanctions without warning and without doing a thorough investigation.
“We feel we have been treated unfairly. We will seek justice,” Edward said yesterday as quoted by Kompas.
Edward also said that he thought his company was victim of a conspiracy that would negatively affect its customers and 27,000 staff members.
Meanwhile, a new petition titled “The Government Should Not Be Afraid to Sanction Lion Air” is gaining steam on Change.org with over 3,000 signatures since it was posted yesterday.
