Lion Air eyes S’pore as feeder hub for regional markets
Indonesia’s largest privately-owned airline Lion Air hopes to use Singapore as a hub to tap into other markets in the region.
The airline announced this at its 12th anniversary celebrations in Jakarta last Friday.
It also unveiled plans to launch a full service airline to tap the long haul market by March next year.
The new carrier, Batik Air, will fly both domestically and internationally, with destinations including Singapore.
Although Singapore contributes about 2 per cent of Lion Air’s overall base of 27 million passengers, this did not stop its founder, Rusdi Kirana from setting up other businesses in Singapore.
These include an airline leasing company to capture a larger share of the regional traffic.
Rusdi Kirana, president director of Lion Air, said: “The idea is that we want to make Singapore not only as a hub for the assets to spread to all the airlines we are going to share or operate, but also as a hub for our feeder. The idea is that we’ll feed Singapore from all over Indonesia. From Singapore, we’ll fly to all other countries.”
Category: Singapore
