BREAKING! AirAsia Chief moves to Jakarta

Neelam Mathews

June 18,16, 2018

AirAsia is to announce its new CEO for AirAsia Malaysia on Monday June 18. The Group CEO and founder, Tony Fernandes will move to Jakarta, its new regional office, to oversee the group's activities to prepare Air Asia as an Asean carrier in time for 2015 when Asean opens its skies.

Aerospace Diary learns likely candidates for the CEO Malaysia's job could be Aireen Omar who heads corporate finance and treasury of the company, Azran, present CEO of AirAsia X, an airline struggling following tough international market conditions or Bo Lingam, Chief of Operations and Planning.

Jakarta is to Asean what Brussels is to EU- its head office. Fernandes says in a statement: “There needs to be a major shift in our perspective, strategy and operations if we are to sustain our trajectory. In short we need to pivot to a wider, regional lens from the first decade’s focus, which has largely been domestic (Ref Malaysia). The enormous potential in an under-served market of three billion people spread across ASEAN, northeast Asia and Southeast Asiaoffers huge opportunities."

AirAsia's chief may also be want to be closer to rival Lion Air in Indonesia that will be coming up with the launch of its new full service airline, Batik Air, by March 2013.  Rusdi Kirana, president director of Lion Air, said of his plans for Singapore: "The idea is that we want to make Singapore not only as a hub for the assets to spread to all the airlines we are going to share or operate, but also as a hub for our feeder." He added: "We plan to make a hub in Medan... From Medan, they'll fly to Singapore, Penang, KL and all other cities in Indonesia." There will also be another hub in Manado, to cater to flights to and from East China, Japan and Korea. 

Lion Air is buying 201 Boeing 737 MAXs and 29 737-900ERs in a $22.4 billion contract that is Boeing’s largest ever. It has also acquired purchase rights for a further 150 737s.

In its statement AirAsia says Indonesia “has just 18 aircraft” in Indonesia, a market of 240 million people." AirAsia also says plans are to list on the Jakarta stock exchange sometime before the end of this year. 

The action might soon be moving to Indonesia from India now!