Tony Fernandes CEO Blog

Just wrapping up in London and heading back to K.L. It has been a terrific two weeks, a time of celebration (AirAsia X's inaugural flight to London on March 11), a time of frenetic activity (global media interviews, negotiations with bankers, discussions on sponsorship, etc.) and also a time for reflection, with several days spent in the south of France.

Now we just need to keep the momentum going. When the whole world seems to be enveloped in doom and gloom,

We're pushing ahead with our plans for expansion, launching new routes (several from Indonesia to Singapore next week, while AirAsia X's maiden flight from Kuala Lumpur to Tianjin, China, takes off April 2) and promoting Kuala Lumpur as the regional hub for low-cost travel.

Meantime, have been keeping track of the developments at home and thought the quote below seemed apt in the circumstances:

“There is nothing more powerful than inspirational leadership that unleashes principled behavior for a great cause. What makes a company or a government sustainable is not when it adds more coercive rules and regulations to control behaviors. It is when its employees or citizens are propelled by values and principles to do the right things, no matter how difficult the situation. Laws tell you what you can do. Values inspire in you what you should do. It’s a leader’s job to inspire in us those values.”

Will be posting my thoughts next week on Malaysia Airport Holdings Berhad (MAHB) and KLIA-EAST; more so on how this decision and the treatment by the government on the final decision will be pivotal in dictating the future of Malaysian businesses.

On my way to France to meet Airbus. Flying EasyJet, the airline that first caught my attention to low cost travel. I owe a lot to Stelios the owner who motivated me to do this eight years ago.

It's been six days since D72006 touched down on the tarmac of Stansted Airport but I am still brimming with euphoria. It's difficult to relay how I felt when I watched Azran and Kamarudin disembark from the aircraft with Asean Secretary-General, Dr Surin Pitsuwan that afternoon. I guess it was a mixture of relief - anything could have happened during the 12-hour transit - and giddy exuberance.

Still, today I can relax a little and reflect on March 11.

This has been my childhood dream since the day my mom packed me off to Epsom College for boarding school. I still have vivid memories of that day in Subang airport. I was a wide-eyed and eager 12-year old. Dressed in my dorky bell bottoms, my voice had hardly cracked and Elton John was telling Kiki Dee not to go breakin' his heart.

When I arrived in London, the weather exceeded my expectations in being grey and dreary. To a kid away from home for the first time, the English looked strangely pale. Public school felt like prison and I was dying to escape home ASAP. I remember asking mom if I could go back to Malaysia during term break but her reply was an emphatic "no" for it was simply too expensive. Thus, I was resigned to ingesting mushy peas and soggy fish pies all summer while the idea of cheap flights home germinated in my head.

I like to think that Malaysians, studying or working in the UK shouldn't ever have to feel the distance between themselves and their families. There's email, Skype and now, really cheap air fares to Kuala Lumpur with AirAsia X. I am just so proud that we have made this a reality.

And to think that just eight years ago my friend Conor McCarthy tore up my proposal for a low-fare long-haul airline when we first met. We kept to the short-haul formula which we've executed beautifully in Asia but I knew I would revisit this project somehow as I had, like my friend and partner, Richard Branson, already been inspired by the story of Sir Freddie Laker and SkyTrain.

Sir Freddie pioneered low-cost, no-frills travel in 1977 and really shook up the market for Transatlantic flights. Until SkyTrain's ridiculously cheap fares (less than £50!!), flights between London and New York were dominated by a comfortable cartel of state-supported airlines.

I see AirAsia X as carrying the torch for Sir Freddie and I wish he had been alive today to witness our first flight to London. What may have interest him was that only half of the passengers on that March 11 voyage were Malaysians. A significant number were customers travelling en-route from the Gold Coast, Melbourne and Perth. In its day, SkyTrain had actually applied for rights to fly between London and Australia. Predictably, Sir Freddie's vision for cheap "Kangaroo flights" was killed prematurely to preserve the interests of a legacy carrier. This is why we chose to name our first A330 "Semangat Sir Freddie" as a tribute to him.

A host of reasons have been given for SkyTrain's spectacular demise, but I do believe it was more a result of big bully carriers conspiring to put it out of business. Sir Freddie did, after the collapse of SkyTrain, sue for antitrust which was eventually settled out of court and I think that says a lot.

Certainly, there were other factors working against Sir Freddie too but airline economics have evolved since the late 70s. We still face the same risks of economic downturns, and high fuel costs but I think we are better equipped to mitigate these risks. Aircraft technology has improved tremendously, lowering the unit cost of carrying a passenger and this is not static. Above all, the world's middle class is growing in numbers resulting in rising demand for air travel. Air transport is becoming more of a commodity and I think it's a pity that many governments are still distorting markets by holding back the open skies effort as much as possible.

Even so, I'm pretty sure that we will see big changes in my lifetime. Sir Freddie and SkyTrain's failure was not at all in vain.

Believe the unbelievable
Dream the impossible
Never take no for an answer

We made it happen. Thanks to all of you for making an old boy's dream come true. Thank you for all your encouragement and support. It means a lot to me.

Don't stop dreaming
Love, bisous from sunny France.

Despite the rain, nothings going to stop us. That's AirAsia. Many would have called a similar event off but we just found a way. The lesson is to never give up.

That's the AirAsia spirit.

PS. Isn't the plane beautiful?

Going off to London again on Friday. Among other things, planning to do a series of media interviews to promote AirAsia X's maiden Kuala Lumpur-London flight on March 11. It's a historical occasion, the first time a low-cost carrier is linking Asia, Europe and Australia. We're very excited about it.

For all who’ve been wondering, we will also be meeting Manchester United officials again while we are in Britain next week.The media coverage on us has been fantastic this past week on Man United's invitation to AirAsia to be their main shirt sponsor. More than 70 print, broadcast and online media worldwide worldwide reported the story, with most of them even quoting directly from my blog post. Will keep you posted.

Now, on to another subject. From the time the blog was launched, there’s been lots of questions on how to be a pilot, will you take me as a pilot, etc. Everyone, it seems, wants to be a pilot with AirAsia.

Well, here's the deal. The AirAsia blog will soon launch a competition and from the entries, we'll pick 10 qualified winners and give them an opportunity to become an AirAsia pilot.

Not going to say much here but if you want a chance to fly an AirAsia Airbus, check the blog this week for details.