Why Do Airlines Cancel Operations?
Several national airlines may be unable to resume their operations, even though the government is imposing the New Normal scenario amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Lion Air Group, for example, stopped operating indefinitely. Lion Air’s president director, Edward Sirait, said that insufficient passengers denied many flights.
He then revealed that Lion Air would suffer from significant losses if it continued to operate since the number of passengers allowed to depart would be very minimal, under 50 percent of the aircraft’s capacity. “We are losing money even if passengers fail to depart,” he said on Wednesday (6/3). A similar phenomenon also happened to PT Garuda Indonesia Tbk and its subsidiary, Citilink. Garuda Indonesia’s president director, Irfan Setiaputra, said that airlines had to consider the budgeted efficiency strategy.