Tony Fernandes CEO Blog

I received this letter late last week and I thought I’d share it with you. This just goes to show that we’ve come a long way since we first met because when we first met in 2007 it wasn’t in the best of terms and now just a couple of years down, here we are working together to better educate ourselves on the needs of everyone who would fly.

It is amazing and blows me away to have these disabled friends of ours, understanding where we are as a LCC and their unrelenting commitment to make the LCC work for disabled guests and everyone in general, with what we have and mind you which is with limited resources and the airport layout. That itself is humbling indeed and from the bottom of our hearts we thank you BEAT!

Barrier-free Environment and Accessible Transport (BEAT),
c/o No 4, Lorong 1A/71 J,
Jalan Carey, 46000 Petaling Jaya.

15 November 2011

AirAsia Berhad,
LCC Terminal, Jalan KLIA S3,
Southern Support, Zone KLIA,
64000 Sepang, Selangor Darul Ehsan.

Attention : Tan Sri Tony Fernandes, Group CEO AirAsia Berhad,
Mr. Bo Lingam, Head of Operations and Planning, AirAsia Berhad.

Dear Tan Sri Tony and Bo,

We, at BEAT, feel very honoured to be given the opportunity to be involved and to support AirAsia in providing training for your staff. Thank you, AirAsia for giving BEAT the full trust and confidence to develop the cross disability training syllabus and modules and to conduct the training.

We are also thankful to be given the opportunity by AirAsia to introduce Disability Equality Training (“DET”) on top of the Disability Related Service Training (“DRST”). DET gives us a correct understanding of disability issues from the perspective of equality and justice. With DET, DRST will be properly understood, better appreciated and more effective.

BEAT wants to give maximum credit to Tan Sri Tony Fernandes, group CEO of AirAsia, for it was Tan Sri Tony who recognised that the training would be best conducted by and with the involvement of disabled people themselves - the end users of the service. It was Tan Sri Tony who invited BEAT to be involved in the training.

As a gesture of his commitment, Tan Sri presented BEAT the AirAsia cap he was wearing on when he met us on 20th July,2007, with his hand written wordings “To all my BEAT friends”, “You have my 100% commitment", and “Dare to dream”. These words which came directly from Tan Sri himself had given us great motivation to give all our best to support AirAsia in the effort to further improve the service to include disabled passengers. Knowingly or unknowingly, Tan Sri Tony has helped put into practice our very famous slogan “Nothing about us without us”. Thank you, again, Tan Sri !
As part of our mission is to work towards a better and accessible environment and an inclusive society including improved services, we see it as part of our responsibility to offer and share our knowledge, experience and expertise because we know best our own needs and how we want to be served. BEAT is fully committed and proud to be working in partnership with AirAsia in implementing change for better and improved service. We know that the good service will ultimately benefit us and the community at large.

May we also take this opportunity to put on record our special thanks and deepest appreciation to Mr. Bo Lingam, Head of Operations and Planning, who was entrusted by Tan Sri, to work with us for the past 3 ½ years. To mention a few, we found Bo to be friendly, easy going, trusting, understanding, accepting, accommodating, fair, reasonable, open minded, and fun to work with and to be with. In short, we have “fallen in love” with him  More importantly, Bo has been able to work with us not just as a working partner but as a friend.

Over the few years of working together, Bo has been able to better understand our struggle and appreciate us for who we are. On most occasions, Bo would make his time available even after office hours to accommodate our timing as many of us work during day time. He would let us decide on the venue of meeting most accessible to us. At times, when we had more issues to work at, the meetings would be dragged till late nights and Bo would stay put throughout every meeting session. There were also occasions when Bo sacrificed his Saturday mornings to meet us. Thank you, Bo for your full support and commitment!

Through Bo and his team, we have got many changes implemented. Among them - the terms and conditions which were discriminatory and unfair towards disabled passengers have been removed. Disabled people who travel unaccompanied are now able to travel on AirAsia. Online bookings are now made possible. Disabled passengers are no more required to sign Indemnity Forms. RM 12 is no more charged for usage of each wheelchair. Special assistance is given upon request without charge. Aisle chair made available when a disabled passenger is on board. Passenger boarding lift made available at LCCT upon request. Special Assistance Service Counter established at LCCT. Developed DET&DRST cross disability training syllabus and modules and mainstreaming them as part of the overall syllabus conducted at AirAsia Academy. Syabas, Bo and Team!

In the face of alternative training offers by local and international groups, Bo recognized the effort, commitment and past record of BEAT and stood by us. Bo maintained that BEAT would continue with the training in Malaysia and also help to extend the training to Thailand and Indonesia. Hence, Bo was in fact instrumental in realising the recently concluded DET&DRST Training of Trainers involving participants from Thailand and Indonesia. Thank you, Bo!

Now that Bo has “left us” for greater tasks else where in AirAsia, we sincerely wish him the best in all his undertakings. We assure you, Bo, that we will give our full support to Zaman and team as we continue the good work you have laid down.

To Bo, we thank you for all that you have been to us. Please do drop by and visit us as and when your time permits. We know that we are not only going to miss you but we will miss you a whole lot!

Warm regards,
Christine & Team,
B.E.A.T. Malaysia.