AirAsia HQ to stay in Malaysia

TOKYO: Malaysia will remain as the operational centre of AirAsiadespite the budget airline's move to establish a regional office in Jakarta, which it says is purely to tap the vast Indonesian market.

AirAsia Group CEO Tan Sri Tony Fernandes clarified that the airline had no intention to relocate its Kuala Lumpur headquarters. “I am a Malaysian, AirAsia is a truly Malaysian brand. Why must the headquarters be outside my own country? “Setting up a regional office in Jakarta is solely a commercial strategy to tap the demand for budget flights in a nation with a population of 230 million,” he said after launching AirAsia Japan's direct flight to Sapporo, Fukuoka and Okinawa yesterday.

AirAsia Japan, the newest low-cost carrier based in Tokyo's Narita International Airport, is a joint venture between Japan's All Nippon Airways (ANA) and AirAsia. AirAsia owns a 49% stake while ANA holds 51%. The Japanese version is promoting 10,000 seats from as low as 5 (20 sen) during the launch that was also witnessed by AirAsia Japan CEO Kazuyuki Iwakata.

Fernandes said his notion of going into the international arena was to turn a Malaysian-born company into a global brand like Samsung, Honda and Nikon. “These foreign firms also have regional offices outside their home country and it doesn't mean they are going away or being less patriotic. I just want shed the kampung-brand mindset and thrust a Malaysian company into the international playing field,” he said. Fernandes was commenting on an article in The Jakarta Post which reported that AirAsia was moving its operations to the Indonesian capital.

On May 20, the newspaper reported that the low-cost airline planned to open its base at South Jakarta's Equity Building in October. Fernandes said AirAsia was ambitiously expanding to serve the highly lucrative travel market and was looking at China, South Korea and Russia as its next regional hubs apart from its current network in the Asean region, India and China.

-thestar online.