Lion Group, the parent company of Lion Air, hopes to complete a deal with Bombardier for at least 50 of its CS300 aircraft by Q1 of 2014.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Lion Group president director Rusdi Kirana stated that the company hoped to receive its first CS300 jet by 2016.
If the deal is successful, it will be Bombardier’s biggest order for its CSeries line, for which it has received 177 firm orders since its launch in 2008.
Speaking to Business Traveller Asia-Pacific, Leithen Francis, Lion Group head of public relations, revealed that Bombardier has said that its CS300 has roughly the same cost per available seat kilometres (ASK) as the larger Airbus A320Neo, thereby improving the fuel to load factor.
“The advantage of the CS300 over other aircraft is it has 130-160 seats,” said Francis. “This is appealing to Lion because it fills a gap between our 72-seat ATR 72 aircraft and our 189-seat 737-800s.”
Currently, no decision has been made regarding which airline the CS300 will serve, but Francis stated that the group was considering it for either Lion Air or full-service carrier Batik Air.
Due to the several highly successful low-cost carrier products offered by Lion Air, Business Traveller Asia-Pacific also enquired if the group was interested in expanding its low-cost carrier model to long-haul services.
“We are not considering doing long-haul low-cost, but we are considering operating the 787-8 on medium haul routes under the LCC business model,” said Francis. “The LCC business model works best on short haul and medium haul routes.”
For more information, visit www.lionair.co.id
Clement Huang
