Background information of AirAsia History The airline was established in 1993 and started operations on 18 November 1996. It was originally founded by a government-owned conglomerate DRB-Hicom. On December 2, 2001, the heavily-indebted airline was purchased by former Time Warner executive Tony Fernandes’s company Tune Air Sdn Bhd for the token sum of one ringgit. Fernandes proceeded to engineer a remarkable turnaround, turning a profit in 2002 and launching new routes from its hub in Kuala Lumpur International Airport at breakneck speed, undercutting former monopoly operator Malaysia Airlines with promotional fares as low as RM1 (US $0. 7). AirAsia has been expanding rapidly since 2001, to become an award winning and the largest low cost carrier in Asia. Organization A new budget terminal, the first of its kind in Asia was opened in Kuala Lumpur International Airport on 23 March 2006. Built at a cost of RM108 million (US $29. 2 million) and spanning some 35,000 square metres (116,000 square feet), the Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) is the new home for AirAsia Bhd. LCCT will initially handle 10 million passengers a year. AirAsia Group is expected to carry 18 million passengers in 2007. AirAsia operates with the world’s lowest unit cost of US$0. 23/ASK and a passenger break-even load factor of 52%. It has hedged 100% of its fuel requirements for the next three years, achieves an aircraft turnaround time of 25 minutes, has a crew productivity level that is triple that of Malaysia Airlines and achieves an average aircraft utilisation rate of 13 hours a day. AirAsia is currently the main customer of the Airbus A320. The company has placed an order of 175 units of the same plane to service its routes and at least 50 of these A320 will be operational by 2013. The first unit of the plane arrived on 8 December, 2005.
AirAsia operates over 200 flights a day, to over 75 domestic and international routes covering Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Myanmar, the People’s Republic of China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Australia and the Philippines. Service AirAsia focus is an organization that provides traveling to passenger around South-East Asia. There are two main type of service provided by AirAsia which is AirAsia and AirAsia X. AirAsia is an offer for passenger that fly around South-East Asia but AirAsia X is an offer for passenger that fly toward Australia, China and etc. GoHoliday is an extra service provided by AirAsia.
GoHoliday offer hotels and activities around that country. Package are provided to passenger who are interested. GoHostel is also an extra service provided by AirAsia. GoHostel provide variety of hotel in the country that the passenger flies to. Offers are often provided to the passenger of AirAsia. Plan AirAsia’s CEO Tony Fernandes unveiled a five-year plan to further enhance its presence in Asia. In the plan, AirAsia will strengthen and enhance its route network by connecting all the existing cities in the region and expanding further into Indochina, Indonesia, Southern China (Kun Ming, Xiamen, Shenzen) and India.
The airline will focus on developing its hubs in Bangkok and Jakarta through its sister companies, Thai AirAsia and Indonesia AirAsia. Hence, with increase frequency and addition of new routes, AirAsia expects passenger volume to hit 18 million by end-2007. On 27 March 2006, the Government of Malaysia announced that AirAsia will take over 96 non-trunk routes, in addition to 19 domestic trunk routes. This was part of Malaysia Airlines route rationalization programme which saw a large number of its domestic sectors being transferred to AirAsia from 1 August 2006.
On September 27, 2008, AirAsia has on its list 106 new routes to be added to its current list of 60 over the next few years. Technology AirAsia widely utilises the Internet as a booking and payment channel. Its website at www. airasia. com allows guests to book and pay for seats, check flight schedules, and acquire information about the airline. About 45% of AirAsia’s business is done through Internet sales. It also became the first airline in the world to offer a multilingual website that comes in six languages: English, Bahasa Malaysia, Mandarin, Tamil, Thai and Bahasa Indonesia.
