From Airport Ticket Scalper to Owner of Lion Air
Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - Before 2000, air travel was still a luxury that not everyone could afford. High ticket prices meant that air transportation was associated with high-income groups.
This situation prompted Rusdi Kirana to introduce a low-cost airline so that air travel could be accessible to the wider public. This idea came to him while he was studying at the Faculty of Economics at Pancasila University and working part-time as a ticket scalper at Soekarno-Hatta Airport.
From this job, Rusdi began to understand the ins and outs of the aviation industry while also accumulating capital to develop his business. In the 1990s, he and his brother, Kusnan Kirana, founded a travel agency called Lion Tour.
The name “Lion” was chosen because both of them share the zodiac sign Leo.
According to Warta Ekonomi magazine (2006), they ran this business for 13 years before it began to grow in 1999. In that year, and with the permission to establish new private airlines in Indonesia, the Kirana brothers founded “Lion Air”.
According to Gatra magazine (13/11/2004), with capital of two leased aircraft, the airline’s license was finally issued in 1999. However, according to the official Lion Air website, the airline only began operations on June 30, 2000.
The first Lion Air route was Jakarta-Pontianak with a price of IDR 300,000. This price was lower than the competitors, who charged IDR 1.1 million. Shortly after, the Jakarta-Manado route was also opened, with a price of IDR 400,000, down from the usual IDR 2.1 million.
Initially, many predicted that the business would go bankrupt, but in reality, it did not. Instead, Lion Air became more successful because it became an alternative for people to travel by air.
In 2004, Lion Air operated 23 aircraft. Every day, Lion Air served 130 flights in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam. The number of aircraft also continued to increase.
Before the pandemic, Lion Air’s aircraft dominated Terminal 1 at Soekarno-Hatta Airport. This is because Lion Air also owns several airlines such as Wings Air, Batik Air, Lion Bizjet, Malindo Air (Malaysia), and Thai Lion Air (Thailand).
This success led Lion Air to call itself a low-cost airline. Its slogan is “We Make People Fly.” In 2018, the airline carried 36.8 million passengers, or 35% of passengers who wanted to travel from island to island, from city to city.
Now, Lion Air has a new airline business, namely Super Air Jet. Interestingly, this new airline was established during the pandemic when many other airlines were struggling.
Super Air Jet’s first flight was on August 6, 2021, with the Jakarta-Kualanamu, Medan and Jakarta-Batam routes. According to its official website, Super Air Jet offers a low-cost carrier concept with direct point-to-point flights in the domestic market, and the company hopes to expand to international routes in the future.
In 2017, Rusdi was ranked 33rd out of 50 of the richest people in Indonesia according to Forbes. Their wealth at that time reached US$970 million. However, in 2022, Rusdi’s ranking became 38th with a wealth of US$835 million.
Even though it is a pioneer of low-cost air travel, we all know that Lion Air sacrifices the expensive thing that passengers have to pay for, namely schedule delays.