Indonesia’s Lion Air could add more Airbus A330-300s to its fleet above the three ordered in December last year, says the head of its aircraft leasing unit.
John Duffy, chief operating officer of Transportation Partners, says that while the aircraft will replace its two Boeing 747s used on Haj services, the group is also looking at other routes it could use them on.
“We may take more [A330s]; I think we’re going to see how the first three perform,” he adds. Duffy was speaking at the Ascend Asia Finance Forum 2015 event in Singapore.
Lion's three A330s, to be configured with 440 seats in a single class, are scheduled to be delivered in the third quarter of 2015.
Duffy says that aside from the Haj services, the widebodies could also be put on thick domestic routes where Lion faces slot constraints. An example is between Jakarta and Medan.
There may even be potential to use the aircraft on leisure services to Australia and north Asia.
“Indeed, the routes that interest our owner are Bali up to Japan, Korea, North China and then Bali down to Sydney to get some great utilisation,” Duffy says. He however admits that the high density, single-class layout of the A330s could also work against Lion on such routes.
Transportation Partners has recently approached the market for sale and leaseback proposals on the three incoming A330s and Duffy says the company is “pleasantly surprised” by the numbers that have come back.
Prior to the A330s, Lion had ordered five 787-8s in 2012, intended for use by its full-service arm Batik Air. Last year however the company indicated that it would convert them into 737 orders as it required larger aircraft.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
