Lion Air has had safety issues

DOOMED FLIGHT The carrier was banned from European airspace in 2016, with other Indonesian airlines

Indonesian budget carrier Lion Air leapt from obscurity to global fame in 2011 when it ordered 230 Boeing planes worth a whopping $22 billion, the US maker’s biggest ever deal, but it has been dogged by safety issues for years.

When co-founder Rusdi Kirana was asked months later if bank loans would be needed to finance the purchase, he told reporters at the 2012 Singapore Airshow: “I am the bank.”

Founded in 1999 by brothers Rusdi and Kusnan Kirani, the budget carrier began operations in 2000 as Indonesia’s first lowcost carrier, using a leased Boeing 737-200 between Jakarta and Denpasar, capital of the resort island of Bali.

It quickly rode the crest of Indonesia’s soaring domestic air travel sector to become the country’s biggest private airline and second largest in Southeast Asia after Malaysian carrier AirAsia.

A boom in demand in the archipelago, the world’s fourth most populous nation, prompted Lion Air to go on an aircraft-buying spree that made headlines around the world starting in 2011.

With then US President Barack Obama as a witness, Boeing and Lion Air signed the record deal on the sidelines of an Asian summit in Bali for the purchase of 29 737-900s and 201 orders of the new 737 MAX, along with options for 150 more aircraft.

The orders were worth $21.7 billion at list prices, with the US aircraft maker describing it as “the largest commercial plane order ever in Boeing’s history by both dollar volume and total number of planes”.

But Lion Air soon surpassed that record when it ordered 234 medium-haul A320 planes from Airbus worth a whopping $24 billion at catalogue prices in 2013.

The carrier currently operates domestic flights and a number of international routes in Southeast Asia, Australia and the Middle East.

However, it has struggled with issues of safety and poor management and was banned, along with other Indonesian airlines, from flying into European airspace until 2016.