Can Lion Air scrap Boeing orders worth US$22 billion after deadly crash and still achieve expansion goals?

Lion Air Mentari’s owner is sketching out plans to become one of the world’s largest budget carriers, while also preparing to scrap US$22 billion in Boeing jet orders out of anger at the manufacturer’s response to an October air disaster.

Rusdi Kirana, the co-founder of Lion Air, Indonesia’s biggest airline, mapped out the seemingly contradictory goals in an interview on Tuesday. The crash that killed all 189 people aboard a Boeing 737 Max won’t derail his ambition to expand the budget carrier to an eventual fleet of 1,000 aircraft, he said. Lion Air may also list its Indonesian unit in 2019, he added.

But it’s not clear if Boeing, the airline’s long-time trade partner, would play a role in that growth given tensions following the crash of a two-month-old aircraft. The budget operator is firming up a formal document to press ahead with cancelling its remaining 737 orders, Kirana said, claiming the US planemaker unfairly implicated Lion Air in the deadly crash.

He has also sent a letter to the Chicago-based company outlining his objections to the way the aircraft maker handled the fallout from the first fatal crash of a 737 Max jet, Kirana said in Jakarta.

“It was very cunning and very inappropriate, which I think is without any ethics,” Kirana said, explaining his plan to scrap the orders. “They did it to one of their biggest customers. They created an opinion that we did not maintain our aircraft properly.”