[5] The airline signed an agreement with US-based aircraft manufacturer Boeing for fifty 737 MAX 10 passenger jets worth $6.24 billion in June 2017.

[8][9] The airline was established in October 1999 by Rusdi and Kusnan Kirana and started operations on 30 June 2000, when it began scheduled passenger services from Jakarta to Denpasar and Pontianak using a leased Boeing 737-200.

The transportation ministry recorded that Lion Air's OTP of 66.45 percent was the worst of six airlines in an assessment conducted from January to April 2011 at 24 airports nationwide.

[15] In January 2012, the Transportation Ministry said that it had sanctioned Lion Air because some of its pilots and crew members were found in recent months to be in possession of crystal methamphetamine.

In late 2011, Muhammad Nasri and two other co-pilots were arrested at a party in Tangerang; in early 2012 a pilot was caught with crystal meth in Makassar.

[16] On 4 February 2012, another Lion Air pilot was arrested following a positive urinalysis test for use of methamphetamine; he was scheduled to fly the Surabaya-Makassar-Balikpapan-Surabaya flight hours later.

[18] On 18 March 2013, Lion Air signed a contract to purchase 234 Airbus aircraft worth US$24 billion in France and witnessed directly by French President François Hollande.

It suspended operations again on 5 June after finding few passengers could provide documents proving they were virus-free and have a business reason or family emergency requiring travel.

[24] In July 2020, Lion Group announced that the airline will lay off 2,600 contract workers as demand continues to sharply decline.

The aircraft was delivered in a special dual-paint scheme that combines Lion Air's logo on its vertical stabilizer and the Boeing "Dreamliner" livery on the fuselage.

[30] In April 2018 Lion Air Group placed an order for fifty Boeing 737 MAX 10 jets, valued at a list price of $6.24 billion.

[32] The statement was further reinforced following the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which eventually led to the worldwide grounding of all 737 MAX aircraft currently in service.

In the days that followed after Flight 302's crash, Bloomberg News reported that Lion Air was evaluating options from Airbus, having already refused to take delivery of a 737 MAX that was going to be delivered in March 2019.