14 August 2019
Low-cost carrier AirAsia (PAA) intends to make its Philippine unit the biggest carrier as it makes plan to relocate to a new home in Bulacan.
AirAsia Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Tony Fernandes said they are planning to aggressively increase their market share in the Philippines to take advantage of the infrastructure ramp-up being made in the country.
The statement was made during AirAsia Asean Day celebrations in Bangkok last week.
“I just had a meeting and for this year the Philippines and Indonesia will be our two biggest growth stories and we will add as many as we can,” Fernandes said.
AirAsia currently holds an 18-percent market share in the country’s commercial aviation industry.
Fernandes said he is “proud” of and “amazed” by AirAsia Philippines’s growth, recounting that AirAsia had a “baptism of fire” while putting up their segment here in the country due to stringent competition with other budget airlines.
Asked how he is going to grow AirAsia to get a larger share of the pie in terms of flights and passengers, Fernandes replied, “Well, add more planes.”
He said they are on track to more than doubling their current fleet of 23 planes to 50 in three to four years’ time, with seven planes in the pipeline amounting to an investment of around $350 million.
AirAsia Philippines CEO Ricardo “Ricky” Isla said they are adding new planes in Cebu, Kalibo and Clark hubs as they are “determined” to increase AirAsia’s market share in the Philippines.
“The biggest addition will come from our Manila hub as we bring in the wide bodies.” says Isla
“The second quarter of this year was a record-breaking year of 2.2 million passengers, and that 2.2 million is something like a 25-percent growth from last year. That alone is an indication that we are really determined to get more market share,” Isla said.
“The moment we get all the slots in the airport we can accommodate more aircraft that will give us more destinations”, says Isla.
Right now, we can only add capacity but cannot add more flights in Manila because slots in NAIA are already full, so we need a new Manila airport that has plenty of open slots. We will surely increase our market share very, very soon,” he said.
In this blog, it was mentioned that there was an undisclosed airlines that signed a MOU with San Miguel that they'll relocate to the new airport after it partially open in 2014. So it's PAA?
ReplyDelete