Asian largest low cost airlines’ group AirAsia moves its strategic management to Jakarta, where ASEAN headquarters are located. The carrier hopes to be able to lobby easier ASEAN decision-makers.
A decade ago, AirAsia came under new ownership and management and relaunched itself as Asia’s first low-cost carrier. The new incarnation began with a “fleet” of two aging Boeing-737’s, six domestic routes and a staff of 250 Malaysian nationals. A decade later, the AirAsia Group encompasses six airlines –AirAsia Malaysia, AirAsia Thailand, AirAsia Indonesia, Philippines’ AirAsia, AirAsia Japan and AirAsia X– serving 80 destinations on 142 routes, a practically all-new fleet of 103 Airbus A-320’s and 11 wide-body A330’s and A-340’s. The group employs now some 10,000 people and they represent all the nationalities of ASEAN as well as nationalities from the rest of Asia and the world.
2012 continues to look promising for the group of airlines. Over the past several months, there have been a successive number of announcements regarding the future plans of the AirAsia Group. Subsidiaries started to operate in the Philippines and soon in Japan, while new ventures are also created beyond the airline industry. The AirAsia Group is partnering with world-renowned companies in specific sectors, such as CAE and Expedia, what we call our “adjacency” businesses.
All this strategy is to firmly establish AirAsia as a global ASEAN brand, launching new routes to boost connectivity within the ASEAN and beyond. ASEAN economic unity in 2015 means that the airline’s strategy will need to focus on a new market comprising 3 billion people spread across ASEAN, Northeast Asia and South Asia. A regional base in Jakarta called AirAsia Asean will soon take over this duty of growing further the airline with an ASEAN perspective. The office will be located far enough, physically as well as psychologically, from AirAsia’s airline offices in each of the countries it operates. Management will also be restructured to accommodate this shift. AirAsia Asean will then concentrate exclusively on strategies while day-to-day operations will continue to be in the hands of each national subsidiary.
Tony Fernandes, AirAsia’s Group Chief Executive Officer said, “To avoid any misinterpretation, let me be very clear: AirAsia Malaysia’s headquarters is not moving to Jakarta. AirAsia Malaysia is a Malaysian-registered airline, with all its aircraft registered under the Malaysian flag and it is a company listed on Bursa Malaysia. That will not change. AirAsia is committed to upholding our pledge to Malaysians that “Now Everyone Can Fly.”
“The establishment of the AirAsia Asean office in Jakarta as our regional base is to help to more fully deliver on that pledge to all the people of ASEAN and beyond. We are blessed to be located in a part of the world where economic growth is expected to be sustained despite the chilly economic winds blowing through Europe and the United States. Shifting AirAsia’s emphasis to a regional strategy is, we believe, not just good business, but also a move that will keep us ahead of the inevitable competition that is heading our way. But while others focus largely on trying to gain market share in domestic markets, we seek to expand our footprint throughout the region. After all, no single domestic market in ASEAN, not even Indonesia, can match the potential of a regional ASEAN market of 600 million people and a combined East Asian market of 2 billion,” he added further.
AirAsia Asean will serve as the “nerve centre” of the regional expansion. It will operate very much like how the Ryanair office in Dublin, Ireland, serves as the strategic planning centre of Europe’s largest LCC. AirAsia Asean will also help to nurture lobbying positions of the group versus ASEAN political world. ASEAN Secretariat is headquartered in Jakarta.
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.
