Grief and fury overflow as families confront Lion Air owner Rusdi Kirana. He stays silent, then flees
- Relatives of the 189 people killed in last week’s Lion Air crash demanded that the airline’s co-founder identify himself in a tense meeting
- After the meeting Kirana swiftly fled, avoiding questions from reporters
Distraught and angry relatives of those killed when a Lion Air jet crashed last week have confronted the airline’s co-founder during a meeting Monday arranged by Indonesian officials.
Rusdi Kirana, the airline’s co-founder and owner, was not invited to speak by Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi, who moderated the meeting between relatives and the officials who are overseeing the search effort and accident investigation.
But Kirana, who was sitting in the audience, stood to face the crowd and bowed his head in apparent apology after angry and distraught family members demanded that he identify himself. Kirana and brother Kusnan Kirana founded Lion Air in 1999.
I was never contacted by Lion Air. We lost our child, but there was no empathy that Lion Air showed to us
The Lion Air jet crashed into the Java Sea on October 29 just 13 minutes after taking off from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board.