Interesting post from airliners net
Mandala499
From Indonesia, joined Aug 2001, 1677 posts, RR: 52
Reply: 14
Posted Tue Nov 30 2004 18:01:36 UTC+1 and read 323 times:
OK, death toll now up to 31...
F/O is from Aruba just FYI...
Some witnesses now saying aircraft landed 1/2 way down the runway. Conflicting reports saying that it initiated a Go-Around too late and aircraft touched down and you know the rest...
BTW, Solo is NOT a thriving tourist town... they just got a bigger airport than Jogjakarta, where everyone go to... Only Silk Air (2x weekly), Lion (3x daily) and Garuda (3x daily) fly to Solo... Unlike JOG, which is quite busy with everyone.
Lion flies 19 MD82s on one of the last counts, and 2 734s...
Subsidiary Wings fly 3 DHC-8-300s... Rumours say they got 5.
They blew 1 DHC8 engine a couple of years back.
Their 732 crashed and got written off a couple of years back (2001?)
Their MD82s have problems... Rear airstairs keep falling down according to secondary sources. Lion has slipped many times off the runway here but the news normally gets covered up. This time, they can't... Plus one Lion engineer has been rumoured to refuse to fly on Lion due to their "maintenance policy"... Plus Lion lost their FedEx contract a while back due to failures in safety and security procedures.
This is an airline with many sins... Pilots fly 120hrs a month but only log 90... You don't land due to weather and expect the CEO to call you on your cellphone asking you to get your butt to the destination regardless of weather... etc etc etc... These are undocumentable events unfortunately, but go and take a couple of Lion guys to a bar, buy them drinks, and what comes out of their mouths sound like a real nightmare.
This is just an accident waiting to happen.
N754PR: When you look at all the old junk flying around in Indonesia and airlines starting left, right and center you have to wonder how this did not happen before.
Well, not the other airlines... There are some which are waiting to make a smoking hole in the ground, but mostly are safe, regardless of their aged fleet... Lion unfortunately are one of the few, and is the largest of that "few" I avoid.
Mandala499