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Lion Air Mentari’s owner is sketching out plans to become one of the world’s largest budget carriers while also preparing to scrap $22 billion in Boeing Co. jet orders out of anger at the manufacturer’s response to an October air disaster.
Rusdi Kirana, co-founder of Lion Air, Indonesia’s biggest airline, mapped out the seemingly contradictory goals Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg. The crash that killed all 189 people aboard a Boeing 737 Max won’t derail his ambition to expand the carrier to a fleet of 1,000 aircraft, he said.
But it’s not clear whether Boeing, the airline’s longtime trade partner, would play a role in that growth given tensions following the crash of a 2-month-old aircraft. The budget operator is firming up a formal document to press ahead with canceling its remaining 737 orders, Kirana said, claiming the U.S. plane manufacturer unfairly implicated Lion Air in the deadly crash.
He has also sent a letter to the Chicago-based company outlining his objections to the way the aircraft maker handled the fallout from the first fatal crash of a 737 Max jet, Kirana said in Jakarta.
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