"We are ready to release 30 pct of the shares of Rusdi Kirana family to the public so that the company would become stronger politically and economically," CEO of Lion Air Rusdi Kirana told the press on the sidelines of the inauguration of fliers, technicians, and cabinet crew of the Lion Training Center (LTC) here on Thursday.
Rusdi said of the projection, it is expected that the money which will be absorbed by the public as much as one billion US dollars.
"The fund is not to be used for expansion purposes, but kept as reserve, because Lion is already backed up by a foreign bank syndication for expansion of its fleet," he said.
Right now Lion`s market share in Indonesia had reached 40-45 pct with a personnel of more than 10 thousand and operating a total of 78 planes including 63 Lion Air aircraft and 15 others of Wings Air, Lion`s subsidiary.
"Every week we serve 3,033 flights and 54 destinations in Indonesia, and five international flights," he said.
Besides, Lion also planned to go international in the middle up to the the end of 2012 by opening tens of international routes based in Bali and Jakarta like the Bali-Sydney route, and to other cities in Australi, as well as the Jakarta-Singapore-Beijing, Jakarta-Fukuoka dan Jakarta-Medan-India routes, in line with the number of B737-900 ERs that we had ordered reaching 80-100 of the 178 planes that we had ordered from Boeing. Right now we have a total of 44 B737-900 ERs, he said.
This means that in this position, he added, it is only reasonable that lion could become a national airline company.
Rusdi also expressed pessimism that by the end of next year Kion Air`s market share may increase to 65 pct.
The funding of lion`s fleet expansion had already been left to foreign bank syndication like DBV (Germany), Bnp Paribas and the US Exim Bank, he said.
On a different occasion, Rusdi said in line with the company`s future growth, Lion also need to have a commitment to meet demands for its human resources.
"The LTC and the Wings Flying School are expected to provide quality and professional personnel needed by the company," he said.
Data of the LTC said that the inauguration was for seven fliers of the Wings Flying School, first batch, and 30 technicians of the Basic Aircraft Maintenance, also first batch.
In addition, there were also 22 cabinet crew members who passed the Initial Training Flight Attendance, the 88th batch.
LTC has also been equipped with new training facilities, namely a Boeing 737-900 NG simulator and a ATR-72 500 simulator and a Wet Drill training facility for cabin crew used as an emergency landing simulator in the water.
So, the LTC has two Boeing 737-900 NG simulators, one ATR 72-500 simulator, and one MD-Series simulator.
In the meantime, the Wings Flying School (WFS) in Cirebon has four training aircraft.
The total number of pilots of Lion Air saat had reached 500, and if the 178 B737-900 ERs ordered by Lion from Boeing are already in Indonesia, the airline company would need 1,780 pilots. (*)
Editor: Kunto Wibisono
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
