Be careful booking Thai Lion Air at this moment

[siam2007]

I suggest to be very careful booking Thai Lion Air flights at this moment.

there has been a major disruption of their flights in Indonesia, where the carrier is originally based. Thousands of stranded PAX in the past 3 days and chaotic and violent scenes at Soekharno-Hatta Airport in Jakarta, with no explanation why flights were delayed or cancelled.

As Indonesian press reports, a speaker of the Airline said they are "short of cash" and can not refund PAX at the moment and they would have to "re-adjust" operations.

This is an alarming signal and I would not be surprised if we just see the next Indonesian carrier going bankrupt (after ADAM Air, Merpati, Kartika, Batavia in the past few years).

And LION is by far the biggest carrier in Indonesia - if they go bust this would cause chaos for sure. No doubt that their Thai operation would come to an end too if this happens.

Their fares in Thailand seemed just too good to be true, and it seems that they INDEED are too good to be true.

here is a link to a local press report (hope it's allowed to post this):

http://thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/police-called-delays-thousands-lion-air-passengers-continue/

and:

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/02/21/lion-air-flights-delayed-bali.html

Edited February 21, 2015 by siam2007

[Xircal]

Thanks for the tip.

It seems a little strange to read that the airline is cash strapped. That won't go down well with Boeing from who they ordered 230 new aircraft worth $22.4 billion.

They've also ordered 234 A320s from Airbus worth another $24 billion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Air#Orders

[siam2007]

 

Thanks for the tip.

It seems a little strange to read that the airline is cash strapped. That won't go down well with Boeing from who they ordered 230 new aircraft worth $22.4 billion.

They've also ordered 234 A320s from Airbus worth another $24 billion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Air#Orders

 

indeed it seems strange, particularly considering that crude oil is as cheap as it has never been in the past 5 years. admittedly, the Rupiah is very weak against the strong Dollar at the moment, but the cheap fuel prices should more than make up for it.

[Ricardo]

It would be a pity if something did happen, as Thai Lion is definitely putting much-needed competitive pressure on Thai Air Asia, witness their reduced profits for last year.

And the passengers of both benefit, which is what I care about !

[siam2007]

It would be a pity if something did happen, as Thai Lion is definitely putting much-needed competitive pressure on Thai Air Asia, witness their reduced profits for last year.

And the passengers of both benefit, which is what I care about !

competition is definitely what customers want to see and right so.

But what LION is doing is basically destroying the entire business, leading to no Airline being able to make a profit, and then there will be no winners. you just CAN NOT operate profitably offering 675 THB seats to Hat Yai or 475 THB seats to Udon, as much as I would like to believe it.

Their safety record and history of major and minor incidents in Indonesia is really worrysome too and continues until today.

In the Philippines you could see where an exaggerated price-war leads to in the end: It leads to a monopoly and very high prices. After several Airlines have fought against each other for a couple of years, there was a major buy-out and merging in 2013, which left only one big Budget carrier controlling most of the market - Cebu Pacific, who bought their competitor Tiger Philippines. Air Asia itself bought into Zest Air, but they - at least until recently - had only a very limited network.

this resulted in CEB being the only operator on plenty of secondary routes, leading to outrageous fares that easily doubled compared to 1-2 years earlier when there was still a lot of competition.