from today's E-Travel Blackboard
Lion Air Australia: Indonesian or Australian
31/01/2008
As Lion Air attempts to launch an Australian subsidiary with joint venture partner SkyAirWorld in Brisbane, new questions are being asked as to who will pull the strings.
Lion Air Australia will be owned in a joint venture which sees Australian-based SkyAirWorld hold a 51% stake and Jakarta-based Lion Air hold the remaining 49%.
According to Australian foreign ownership laws, for an airline to use Australian air rights to fly overseas, it must see a majority of Australians owning the company.
The relatively young SkyAirWold has claimed that the carrier will include 'Australian regulation, Australian pilots, Australian cabin crew and Australian maintenance'.
But this has been contradicted by Lion Air founder and CEO, who has stated to Indonesian publications that it will be Lion Air who will be in control of the new carrier's operations.
Some aviation watchers have questioned whether the move by Lion Air is so that the Indonesian carrier can skate around international bans on Indonesian planes into the US and EU due to their poor safety record.
Since Lion Air launched in 1999, it has written off three planes due to damages on landing.
In 2004 flight JT538 flown in a McDonnell Douglas MD-82 carrying 146 passengers crashed landed at the Adi Sumarmo Airport in Surakarta, killing 23 passengers, one crew member and the pilot.
Lion Air Australia is yet to apply to Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority for permission to operate as an Australian company.