Lion Air crash shows challenges of Asia's budget airline boom

The investigation into the fatal crash of a Boeing jet from Asia’s second-largest budget airline has turned the spotlight on the ballooning growth of low-cost carriers in the region and the training, staff and facilities needed to support them. Rising wealth is adding a million new Asian fliers a year, spurring entrepreneurs, full-service airlines and regional governments to try their hand in an industry notorious for price wars and outside forces that have doomed dozens of ventures. Vietnam’s Bamboo Airways is the latest to join the market with its first flight due this month, feeding holidaymakers to the resorts of owner and property billionaire Trinh Van Quyet. AirAsia Group will follow with a joint venture in the same country in August. Japan Airlines Ltd. aims to get a medium- and long-haul budget unit up and running by 2020, while in South Korea, at least four new aspirants have applied for permits. New, longer-range and fuel-efficient planes are encouraging more routes. But the loss of Lion Air Flight 610 last month in Indonesia, and a preliminary accident report that criticized the carrier’s safety and maintenance regimes without identifying the cause of the crash, has highlighted some of the factors that make the commercial operation of no-frills airlines so precarious. Potential growth in Asia is huge. LCCs accounted for close to 55% of all seats within Southeast Asia so far this year and more than 60% in South Asia. Yet some of the biggest markets in the region are just getting going. China got its first no-frills airline -- Spring Airlines -- in 2005, and Japan and South Korea are also now embracing the trend. Story describes five key factors Asia’s low-cost carriers must navigate to succeed in luring Asia’s growing army of fliers.<br/>