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On Wednesday, Tony Fernandes, AirAsia CEO, said he believes his airline will come back stronger than before in 2021. People want to travel, he said, and they feel it is safe to do so, as evidenced by the airline’s record sales in Malaysia as the country came out of its partial lockdown earlier this week.
Sales record cause for optimism
Tony Fernandes, the Malaysian businessman who took over AirAsia in 2001 after paying a ringgit, believes that the demand for air travel is fundamentally there and that the airline will return stronger than ever in 2021. The first signs that his optimism could be justified they arrived a few days later. ago when Malaysia lifted its reinstated partial restrictions. As a result, the airline’s ticket sales soared.
The CEO of AirAsia believes that this is an indication that people want to fly and feel confident that it is safe to do so. In an interview with CAPA Chief Executive Peter Harbison on Wednesday, he also claimed that countries are desperate to open up and that Singapore will likely be the first to do so sometime in March.
This is due to the relatively simple logistics of vaccination, compared to other Asian countries with larger populations. Fernandes projects that we will see a broader return to normalcy in July or August and says that vaccine requirements for travelers will be up to governments, not airlines.
.@airasia Tony Fernandes, CEO of the group: The demand is there and people want to fly. There is an element of frustration that people say we have to get on with our lives … #CAPALive pic.twitter.com/QUPTEbeAfJ
– CAPA – Aviation Center (@CAPA_Aviation) December 9, 2020
Just “another chapter”
Fernandes also said that COVID was “just another chapter in an incredible journey” and that it had allowed his company to step back and restructure, reverting to AirAsia’s original business model. He expressed optimism for the future and said that people will adapt and get used to the new health protocols while traveling.
Of course, this raises the question of what will happen to AirAsia’s large Airbus order book. The budget airline has no fewer than 349 A321neos and 13 A320neos on orders that have yet to be delivered. These include 30 of the A321XLRs, which would have gone to the beleaguered AirAsiaX long-haul branch.
AirAsia could return jets in the short term, order book still standing
As one of the last airlines to conclude negotiations with Airbus on postponement of deliveries due to the COVID-19 crisis, the CEO of AirAsia is still confident that the airline could “absolutely” take all of those planes, but not now. The airline might even return something.
“In the short term, we will have to not take planes and we may have to return the planes in the short term as we rebuild our cash balances and rebuild our balance sheet.” Fernandes said in the interview.
What do you think of Mr. Fernades’s statement that AirAsia would continue to accept all the aircraft it has ordered?
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