Lion Air never never again

[CaolIla]

It's a bad day for me.

When I buy the ticket Manado --> Sorong and back the situation was nice arriving the afternoon in Manado spent a night in Manado and flight the next day to Sorong... on the return we will stay in Lembeh for a little bit less than one week, perfect.

Some weeks after the reservation first problem our flight to sorong was cancelled and the new one is the next day... Hummm ok I make the change of the hotel reservation in Manado (one night more... and the first question what can we do ? We lost one day diving... ) The hotel in Raja was ok to reduce our stay for one day..

Middle of january our return flight is cancelled and we flight back one day later... I managed to fly one day earlier, we was lucky the Hotel in Lembeh had some free room.

Today.. our Manado --> Sorong was cancelled and move one day later..   3 nights in Manado... and only one night in the first hotel in Raja... hummm  very bad

For the return the same cancelled move one day later ... (the originaly booked flight)  but now the Lembeh Hotel is allready paid... 

We are flying in more or less one month... how many time I will need to change all by hotel bookings? And I'll probably loss some money.

I'm really frustrated...  Such situation don't help the divers go diving Raja Ampat.  For us it's the first and the last time. It's the worst organization I've ever had for a trip

Question: 

Have you ever experienced this kind of situation?
If so, how did you deal with that?
 

[bghazzal]

I've had, like probably almost all passengers, issues with Lions/Wings - also had an Air Asia flight cancelled when I was in Raja Ampat in 2015, when internet reception meant hoping your Telkomsel card worked at the end of the jetty, that took quite a bit of work...

 

Back to your issue, it might not make sense anymore, but maybe it might be possible to look into Manado-Sorong Garuda options instead, eventually cancelling the Lion air leg?
More expensive and might not have the ideal timetable, but usually less cancelations/changes than Lion, especially for slightly more remote areas with less traffic.

I don't know if it's still up and running, but a few years back there was also a  Garuda Makassar-Sorong night flight that would land in Sorong at 6am, usually enough to catch the ferry to Waisai for instance - took that quite a few times

 

best of luck

 

Edited February 7 by bghazzal

[Luko]

11 hours ago, CaolIla said:

Question: 

Have you ever experienced this kind of situation?
If so, how did you deal with that?

1- yes,  I would say every othertime I flew to/from Sorong or Makassar with LionAir. It was either canceled or rescheduled.

2- try to get a TransNusa flight if you can, which is more reliable and cheaper for the SOQ-MDC segment. On top of their SOQ-CGK, Garuda has also opened this year a SOQ DPS flight, not everyday though.

Problem will be to get a refund from LionAir, it takes many phone calls (you'd want to kill their web bot)

3- as a rule of thumb I always try to get a day early in/out of Sorong and I spend the night at SwissBelotel.

[Architeuthis]

I fear the change of flight dates is a common issue these days... ☹️

 

Last November, on our way to Mafia Island/Tansania we had a similar issue with Turkish airline: The route was with Turkish airline from Vienna to Istanbul, Istanbul to Dar es Salaam and from Dar es Salaam to Mafia via domestic airline. I booked the first two flights as a package from Turkish and the domestic flight separately. Few days before departure, Turkish airline wrote me that the flight from Vienna to Istanbul was postponed for one day (but not the connection flight from Istanbul to Dar es Salaam, that was still one day before our arrival in Istanbul ...). I wrote Turkish airline bureau in Vienna whether they are crazy. The changed the scedule and we flew one day earlier (domestic airline and hotel were fortunately able to change the scedule accordingly)...

=> A lot of flurry, fortunately for nothing...

=> If possible, I book always via an agency as a package tour (would nor have been possible in this case), then the agency has to deal with these troubles...

 

Wolfgang

 

P.S.: When we were in Raja in 2020, we booked a package tour via agency (flight plus homestay plus safari) - no problems experienced....

Edited February 7 by Architeuthis

[CaolIla]

4 hours ago, Luko said:

as a rule of thumb I always try to get a day early in/out of Sorong and I spend the night at SwissBelotel.

Good idea...  but in my case  my flight was cancelled 2 times... 

Edited February 7 by CaolIla

[CaolIla]

NusaTrip was very helpfull.

The answers were fast and good.
I asked if it possible to fly at the date we originaly booked... Yes it was possible.
For the return we are flying one day before the cancelled day.
That's mean we will stay one night more in Lembeh... and one night less diving in Raja Ampat...

It's ok for me I'm more and more unhappy with this trip... bad feeling... To many problems in the organisation.

We will see.

In the futur I will avoid to take domestic flight. Since over 1 years with a lot of travel for diving I had only one big change to do... in the Philippins with Cebu Pacific...   and now.4 changes for a 1h30 minutes and return. And allways the proposition of a flight the next day.

For the first change I tried to make the modification direct with Lion Air....   😞 the service is very bad.

Nusatrip solved my problem in less than 30 minutes.

Now I need to cross the finger until  we arrived in Sorong 😉

[Elvandar]

Last year, thanks to lion, we almost missed our emirates fligth, we should have arrived 4 hour early in Jakarta, but after 4 hour delay for apparently no reason of the Lion flight, we had literally to run around the airport and we catch our flight by minutes, we were among the last passenger boarding

Fun ending for out trip in Raja Ampat

[Muellema]

Hi,

 

travelled a lot in Indonesia since 1992 and did a lot domestic flights with different companies in the past. Lion/Wings is notorious for delay and cancelled flights and it looks like it`s getting worse. 

We visited last year October/November for 2 month Indonesia for diving. 

First domestic connection with Lion was Denpassar-Makassar- Ambon. First booked stretch from Makassar was cancelled and we were booked on an earlier flight. After internationa arrival and some hours in Kuta DPS-UPG than was delayed 6h so we arrived after midnight in UPG and our new flight to Ambon was 05.00 in the morning instead of the primary booked flight at 09.00 that was cancelled by Lion. Fortunately we had booked the UPKG airport hotel so we found approx 3 hours sleep. Morning flight to Ambon delayed for 3 hours. Next step was Wings from Ambon to Saumlaki which worked fine. Next step Saumlaki- Ambon- Makassar-Manado nightmare again. Saumlaki- Ambon in time. Ambon- Makassar started 1 hour ahead of schedule. We had scheduled stop in UPG of 8h which turned out to 13h as we arrived one hour earlier and the flight to Manado was 4 hours delayed and than our luggage took 1,5h at MDC airport for pick up. Our pick up from the resort in Lembeh where waiting for hours till 3am at the airport to welcome us. After that we decided to fly with Garuda from Manado to Denpasar which worked fine. But be aware that compared to former times Garuda checked the hand luggage, not on check in but prior to boarding. We were lucky that they had already discussions with locals so we could path by without check. Extra sport/Diving luggage was no problem but we had to open the bag and they took photos of our diving equipment. Domestic travelling in Indonesia was much easier in former times. Just info on the current situation.

 

Br Markus

[CaolIla]

Thanks all for your post.

 

[hedonist222]

6 hours ago, CaolIla said:

NusaTrip was very helpfull.

The answers were fast and good.
I asked if it possible to fly at the date we originaly booked... Yes it was possible.
For the return we are flying one day before the cancelled day.
That's mean we will stay one night more in Lembeh... and one night less diving in Raja Ampat...

It's ok for me I'm more and more unhappy with this trip... bad feeling... To many problems in the organisation.

We will see.

In the futur I will avoid to take domestic flight. Since over 1 years with a lot of travel for diving I had only one big change to do... in the Philippins with Cebu Pacific...   and now.4 changes for a 1h30 minutes and return. And allways the proposition of a flight the next day.

For the first change I tried to make the modification direct with Lion Air....   😞 the service is very bad.

Nusatrip solved my problem in less than 30 minutes.

Now I need to cross the finger until  we arrived in Sorong 😉

 

How did you get in contact with NusaTrip?

[CaolIla]

@hedonist222 it's easy on the webpage of nusatrip there is a Whatsapp number

+62 812-8222-8747

For sure the next time I'll book a flight in Indonesia I'll use NusaTrip    but not a Lion Air flight 😉