Air Asia The Legend Story

‘’ If you sit up in your ivory tower and just look at financial reports, you’re going to make some big mistakes‘’

                                                                                    Tony Fernandez, CEO

Ever heard about the story of this great guy? Yup, he is Mr. Tony Fernandez, a guy who had just created a great art up in the Malaysia’s airlines industry. Mr. Fernandez had started his career in the music industry but once the music industry failed to adapt quickly to the internet, Tony Fernandez deeded to make a clean break. He left his job to pursue a childhood dream which is to set up an Asia’s first low cost airline. Mr. Fernandez bought Air Asia from a Malaysian government owned company in September 2001. Mr. Fernandez running the airlines business with zero knowledge, he had no experience of running an airlines at all. Coming into a big industry with good art and strategy of business, Air Asia had grew up from 2 planes in 2002 to a fleet of 86 aircraft flying 30 million of people around the world. After the success of Air Asia’s short-haul flights, he then expanded had created two separate companies which one will focus on low cost short-haul flights while another one focusing on long-haul routes. Managing two different companies with different management could bring a big problem to others but not to Mr. Fernandez. ‘’ We have 2 separate sets of crew, two separate sets of pilots and engineers. So, it’s a very different culture but they’re symbiotic without being parasitic and being on top of each other ‘’, he explain.

These two airlines however utilize similar modes operand which is efficiency is the key to keep up with demand and ensuring a profit. We used to heard that customer always comes first or customer always right at any comp or org out there but not for Mr. Fernandez. He always is practicing the concept of ‘’ employees before customers ‘’. He used to say that, ‘’ employees comes number one, customers come no. 2. If you have a happy workforce, they’ll look after your customers anyway’’. This is the great view of this brilliant guy.

            Air Asia also moves one step front by involving in air cargo industry. It’s not quite a norm usually that low cost carrier (LCC) to have a dedicated cargo business but Air Asia has done it with great success. While belly cargo operation is not fresh anymore in this sector since MAS Cargo also conducts this industry. Air Asia has done it in great success and this can be seen from the TV numbers that latter has experience in terms of revenue and growth. The vast network that both Air Asia and Air Asia X covers as well as the numbers of aircraft that the comp holds right now is also the factors that lead to the successful of Air Asia Cargo. The A320 airline has about 2.5 tons of cargo capacity while the larger A330 has about 10 tons of capacity.

            Normally, LCC has minimal turnaround time of just 25 minutes but amazingly, Air Asia has managed to come up with 22 min of turnaround time for cargo handling into and out of its aircraft compared to the usual 45 to 60 min in other airlines. Extra points should be given to Air Asia team for manage to reduce their delay of fights due to cargo handling from 1% to 0.03% and incidents with regards to cargoes have also been reduced to just 2 cases per month.

            Throughout 3 years of operation, Air Asia Cargo Division has won awards for its outstanding achievement. It is only LCC and airlines that has won World’s Best Customer Care Awards by Air Cargo week. Perhaps this is due to this that Apple has given Air Asia X the honor of transporting the 1^st batch of Ipad 2 deliveries from its China’s Chengdu plant to Nagoya, Japan and Sydney, Australia.

‘’Hand your cargo with a smile. Let us take the load off you.’’

                                                                   Air Asia Cargo.

            Air Asia is really a great company airlines airline that create a creative and innovative ways of conducting business even you’re coming into industry with zero knowledge, but once you worked for it then you gonna feel it.