A clash on the management of AirAsia Japan seems difficult to avoid between Japanese carrier All Nippon Airways and the Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia.
TOKYO- Japan is a fascinating country. Its traditions are amazing and very much alive; its technology advance makes the country looking like a sci-fi movie; its cuisine is one of the most refined of this planet. And his citizens are very well educated, extremely courteous and hard to understand. Japan has in fact a strong feeling of superiority compared to the rest of Asia which is also supported by a powerful sense of nationalism.
This is what probably the AirAsia team is now learning. Engaged into a joint venture with All Nippon Airways to manage the low cost carrier AirAsia Japan, the two air partners are now clashing over the management method. Earlier this week, an ANA spokesman explained to the press agency AP that the carrier “was looking for the best ways to the future growth of AirAsia Japan, and that includes the possible dissolution of the venture”.
Since its inception back to August 2012, AirAsia Japan has not been able to make any money. Based at Narita Airport – still one of the world’s most expensive airports for its fee-, the carrier is serving only a network of six destinations including three domestic ones. And it struggles to reduce sharply its costs. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, ,” AirAsia chief Tony Fernandes explains that “the problem is not with the model, it is with its management. AirAsia Japan will do well. But it’s got to be run as a low-cost airline. The difficulties right now…are that we just have different styles of running it.”
Despite officially rejecting any attempt of ending the partnership, All Nippon Airways is for now capitalizing mostly on its new low cost carrier in Osaka, PEACH. If AirAsia walks out of its JV with ANA, then PEACH might become the newest budget kid on the block in Japan.
(Soures: AP and Wall Street Journal)
Luc Citrinot a French national is a freelance journalist and consultant in tourism and air transport with over 20 years experience. Based in Paris and Bangkok, he works for various travel and air transport trade publications in Europe and Asia.
