Lion Air usually gets on the headlines for all the wrong reasons (flight delays, mostly), but it seems that some people can’t cut them some slack even when they’re not the ones at fault.
Recently, a viral video surfaced showing irate passengers who missed their Lion Air flight departing from Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta Airport heading to Batam (and one party traveling to Medan, though it doesn’t seem like their case pertains to this story). In the video, they claimed that they all checked in on time but missed the flight because apparently there was no boarding announcement.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BSQxEL_gs3W/
Lion Air public relations officer Andy Saladin confirmed that eight passengers missed their flight that day. According to him, the flight, which departed from Soekarno-Hatta’s Terminal 1, departed according to schedule at 1:10 pm and that the gate closed at 1:05 pm, not before 1 pm as one passenger in the video said.
As for the allegation that Lion Air staff did not announce when the plane was boarding, Andy gave a strong argument why that could not have been the case.
“If the plane departed without announcing it to passengers, than 200 people would not have boarded,” he said, as quoted by Kompas yesterday.
If the eight passengers missed their flight through no fault of the airline, then Lion Air policy states that they’re not entitled for any concessions. Even so, Andy said the airline flew the passengers the next day at no extra cost to them.
So, is this an instance of Lion Air actually deserving praise for treating its passengers better than they deserve? Because that would be weird.
