Airasia Hopes To Resume Most Routes By Year End Says Tony Fernandes

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AirAsia is in talks with Airbus to defer some of its orders to a later date.KUALA LUMPUR: AirAsia expects to resume flying to “a large part” of its routes by the end of this year and hopes to raise RM2.5 billion in capital for the whole group to keep it airborne.
However, CEO Tony Fernandes, in an interview with CNBC, said he does not expect passenger capacity to return to pre-Covid-19 pandemic levels until 2023, adding that business travel would be slower to pick up.
Fernandes also said he hoped to raise up to RM2.5 billion from investors and through loans. AirAsia reported a fifth straight quarterly loss between July and September and its stock is down almost 22% so far this year.
“We’re a little bit behind schedule than we wanted to be but the amount’s exactly where we want to be. We are very confident that this capital that we’ll raise will take us well into 2023,” he was reported as saying.
After that, he added, AirAsia would emerge with a better cost structure, a strong digital business and good demand for the airline.
Fernandes believes the outlook for the global aviation industry is improving because more countries are vaccinating their people against Covid-19.
AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes.Noting it’s been tough, the CEO told CNBC: “The most important thing is there’s a huge amount of demand out there and we just have to wait for borders to open and I think we’re one of the first kind of businesses that will recover, from an airline perspective, because we’re very strong in domestic and regional.”
He also said budget airlines that flew shorter routes and sold on-demand services would recover quicker than carriers that flew inter-continental routes and relied on first and business class travel.
Fernandes said the company was in talks with Airbus as some of its orders might have to be deferred to a later date.
“We don’t want to change that for short-term decisions.”
It was earlier reported that AirAsia had ordered more than 660 Airbus jets.
The airline sector has been badly hit by the pandemic, with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) saying in December that airlines would suffer a net loss of US$118.5 billion for 2020 and an expected net loss of US$38.7 billion in 2021. - FMT

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