All Lion Air Plane Passengers Safe

Jakarta (Antara) - All passengers and crew members of a Lion Air plane survived after the aircraft landed in shallow water before reaching the runway of Ngurah Rai airport in Denpasar, Bali, on Saturday afternoon. "The plane with 7 crew members was carrying 101 passengers from Bandung, West Java, to Denpasar when it overshoot the runway but all of them survived," Lion Air Director General Edward Sirait said. According to him, there were five children and an infant among the passengers the Boeing 737-900 jet. Earlier report said the ill-fated plane was carrying 168 passengers but Edward denied it, and said he had the manifest of all passengers. Meanwhile, Bali Police Chief Inspector General Arif Wachyunadi said all passengers have been evacuated. "All have been evacuated and now there is nobody in the plane," Arif Wachyunadi said. Lion Air is the Indonesia's largest private airline company, and becomes one of the world's fastest growing carrier as it goes into the global aviation spotlight with record deals to buy Airbus planes. Airbus in Paris on March 18, 2013, announced that a record order worth 18.4 billion euros, (US$24 billion) from Lion Air for 234 medium-range A320 jets. Lion Air also gave Boeing its largest-ever order when it finalized a deal for 230 planes last year. (*)