Batik Air

Is Batik Air safe?

Yes, on the evidence of its accident record. Batik Air, the Lion Group's full-service airline in Indonesia, and its Malaysian sister Batik Air Malaysia (formerly Malindo Air) have never had a fatal accident since both began flying in 2013. Both pass the IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary audit as IATA members. The worry is the crew side: in 2024 alone, both pilots fell asleep on one flight and another crew flew dangerously low near Canberra. We score the two airlines together at 75, well above Lion Air and above Garuda Indonesia at 70.

Which Batik Air is flying you?

Airline	Code	Certificate	Fleet
Batik Air	ID	DGCA, Indonesia	Mostly Airbus A320s, plus Boeing 737-800s and 737-900ERs
Batik Air Malaysia	OD	CAAM, Malaysia	Boeing 737-800 and 737 MAX 8, Airbus A330-300

The two share a brand and an owner, but each has its own certificate, maintenance approvals and national regulator. Both belong to the Lion Group, alongside Lion Air, Wings Air, Super Air Jet and Thai Lion Air, which are not covered here.

What has gone wrong?

There are no crashes to describe. The events that count are these.

Two pilots asleep, January 2024. On flight ID6723 from Kendari to Jakarta, an A320 with 153 passengers, the captain took a rest in cruise. The first officer, after handling weather deviations and radio calls, fell asleep too. For 28 minutes no one answered Jakarta control, and the aircraft drifted off its track. The captain woke, woke the first officer, told ATC they had a radio problem and landed safely. KNKT's preliminary report rated it a serious incident. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation grounded the crew, sharply reprimanded Batik Air and opened a review of fatigue risk management on night flights across Indonesian airlines.

Low near Canberra, June 2024. On the first passenger flight from Bali to Canberra, a Batik Air 737-800 arriving before dawn with the control tower closed flew a holding pattern wrongly. It levelled at 4,700 feet where the minimum was 5,600, passing about 900 feet above the eastern slopes of Mount Campbell; no terrain warning sounded. Australia's ATSB found the crew had flown the wrong arrival route and had not selected the local radio frequency. It also identified safety issues at the airline: Batik Air had not assessed the risks of the new route properly and had not made sure all crews completed the training needed for Canberra. The airline changed its briefings and moved arrivals into tower hours.

Runway collision, April 2016. At Jakarta's Halim airport at night, a Batik Air 737-800 taking off with 56 people on board was cleared while a TransNusa ATR 42, unlit, was being towed across the runway. The tow truck was talking to the tower on a separate handheld radio, and the controller was not watching it. The 737 hit the ATR at about 130 knots, after the speed at which take-off can no longer be safely abandoned; both aircraft caught fire, but nobody died. The tower's clearance, not the Batik crew, was the main failure.

Turbulence. Severe turbulence injured a passenger and a flight attendant on a Jakarta–Medan flight in October 2017, and four people near Surabaya in January 2018.

For Batik Air Malaysia, the most recent events are engine problems: a 737 MAX 8 lost its left engine climbing out of Melbourne on 25 November 2025 and returned safely. As Malindo Air, it lost an ATR 72 to an engine fire after take-off from Subang in March 2014; the crew returned and everyone got off unhurt.

How good is the oversight?

Batik Air answers to Indonesia's DGCA. Indonesian airlines were all banned in the EU from 2007; Batik Air was cleared individually before the EU removed every remaining Indonesian airline on 14 June 2018. Indonesia is not on the FAA's current IASAFAA IASAThe US FAA's check of whether a country's aviation regulator meets ICAO standards. Category 1 means it does; Category 2 means it does not.More in the glossary list ("not listed", not a downgrade). Batik Air Malaysia answers to CAAM, which the FAA lists in Category 1 after a 2019–2022 downgrade. Both airlines appear on IATA's member list, so both pass IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary. Oversight scores 72.

How to fly Batik Air safely

• Prefer daytime flights if you can. The 2024 sleeping-pilots case was a fatigue problem on a red-eye, and Indonesia's own review focused on night operations.
• Keep your belt fastened. Two of Batik Air's injury events were turbulence over Sumatra and Java.
• Check the code. ID and OD are different airlines under different regulators.

How we scored it

The clean accident record (86) carries the score; it is not 95 because the airlines are only 13 years old. Serious incidents (58) are the weakest factor, because the 2024 events point to crew fatigue and training gaps, not bad luck. Compare AirAsia, the other big low-cost group in the region, at 68.