Thread: Airline News

http://www.travelmole.com/stories/11...m_id=s~dnvY!~A


21 July, 2011

Nok, Nok. Who’s there? It’s the wisecracking CEO

Patee Sarasin, chief executive of Thai low-cost carrier Nok Air is not afraid of having a go at his rivals – among them Tiger Airways, Air Asia and national carrier THAI Airways.

Patee, speaking at the Aviation Outlook Australia Pacific conference in Sydney, said Nok Air – unlike its rivals – was not trying to grow at all costs.

“Look at the example of Tiger Airways (currently grounded in Australia by the aviation safety watchdog), when you try to expand too fast you forget to do the small things you need to do.”

Patee said Nok Air was succeeding by focusing on the domestic Thai market and “making a lot of money by connecting smaller towns using smaller ATR aircraft.

“This networking gives us domination of the towns we connect. And where we have new competition, we simply invite them to join us in an alliance. We use our brand and sell through our network – it helps our revenue and keeps competitors onside.”

Nok Air distributes its products through 7Eleven stores and smart phones. And it the next few months, the CEO said the airline would use video conferencing to allow customers to talk to the person selling them a ticket, or see a hotel room before they booked it.

“Customers can see a room before they book, although the longer they look, the more the price of the room will go up.”

Patee said Nok Air unashamedly employed “pretty young girls” as cabin attendants. “When was the last time you saw a pretty 25-year-old serve you in business class on a THAI Airways flight?” he asked the audience at the Shangri-La Hotel in Sydney.

AirAsia, he said, had tried to copy some of Nok Air’s attention-grabbing self-publicity. “There was talk of Tony Fernandes (AirAsia CEO) appearing naked for a promotion but, oh my god, would you want to see Tony naked?”

Patee said Nok Air’s load factor had never been below 78 percent for the last two years and the airline was progressing “in a cautious way”.

“That’s why Tony Davis (Tiger Airways CEO) is not here today,” he joked.

In reply to a light-hearted question from the audience, Patee said he had had nothing to do with getting Thailand’s new prime minister elected – “although she is very pretty and, if I may say so, much prettier than your prime minister in Australia.”

This is my Emirates Airlines itinerary over the next month with my family ie.girlfriend and our twins. My flights are in yellow the family flights in blue/green.
Anyone have any idea of the airmiles ie Business Class and Skywards Gold holder.

27/07/2011 DOH-DXB- EK850 ETD:1815pm ETA 1815pm BOEING 777-300ER
28/07/2011 DXB-BKK - EK384 ETD:0315am ETA 1225pm AIRBUS A380-800
29/07/2011. BKK-DXB - EK419 ETD:0240am ETA 0545am BOEING 777-300ER
29/07/2011. DXB-LHR - EK001 ETD:0745am ETA 1215pm AIRBUS A380-800
12/08/2011 LGW-DXB- EK016 ETD:1425pm ETA 0015am BOEING 777-300ER
13/08/2011 DXB-BKK - EK384 ETD:0315am ETA 1225pm AIRBUS A380-800
16/08/2011 BKK-DXB - EK375 ETD:0940am ETA 1315pm BOEING 777-300ER
16/08/2011 DXB-DOH -EK849 ETD:1530pm ETA 1730pm BOEING 777-300

Asia Sentinel - AirAsia Moves Corporate HQ from KL to Jakarta

Saturday, 23 July 2011

Last Call for Jakarta

Putting regional office in Indonesia is a blow for Prime Minister Najib

With all the troubles he has had over the last two months, the announcement Friday that AirAsia, arguably Malaysia’s most vibrant private company, is moving its headquarters out of the country to Indonesia is one more blow.

Tony Fernandes, AirAsia’s group chief executive, announced the decision in Tokyo Thursday, saying the move is an effort to upgrade his company’s image as a regional Southeast Asian airline rather than just a Malaysian carrier.

“I don't know whether Najib has been told or not,” said a business associate of Fernandes in Kuala Lumpur. “But why should Tony care? There are solid business reasons for moving to Jakarta.”

Najib has been on a whirlwind trip to foreign capitals to try and mend the country’s image in the wake of a violent police crackdown on peaceful marchers seeking to present a petition to the country’s king on July 9, asking for election reform. In a throwback to the 1980s, Malaysian censors blacked out details of a report about the march carried in The Economist.

That was followed on July 23 with the results of a royal commission of inquiry that concluded that a young aide to an opposition politician had been hounded so badly during a marathon interrogation over office spending that he threw himself out of a window and killed himself.

Then on Friday, immigration officials took William Bourdon, the leader of a team seeking to ferret out the details of a massive scandal involving defense procurement, off a plane in Kuala Lumpur, held him for several hours and ordered him deported via a flight back to Paris.

Fernandes characterized the move of the headquarters as a simple business decision to take advantage of Indonesia’s vastly larger economy and population, which is nearly 10 times that of Malaysia’s, although Malaysian annual per-capita gross domestic product of US$14,700 by purchasing power parity is much higher currently than Indonesia’s at US$4,200. The size of the country, however, meant that the Indonesian economy was estimated by the CIA Factbook for 2010 at SS$1.03 trillion against Malaysia’s US$414.4 billion.

AirAsia’s decision to move the headquarters is a serious negative propaganda blow for Najib’s 1Malaysia Plan, an intensive effort to lure foreign direct investment to Malaysia. In September 2010, the Malaysian government announced ambitious plans to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars in private investment in an effort to move the country out of the so-called middle income trap, and double per capita income to push Malaysia into the ranks of developed nations by 2020.

AirAsia may well be the only Malaysian company besides the state-owned energy giant Petronas to have made an international impact – and Petronas does it by advertising intensively during Formula 1 races and by sponsoring a car – which Fernandes does as well. Launched in 2002 as a regional no-frills carrier with just two planes, AirAsia now flies 93 planes all over Asia. In addition, a long-haul service, AirAsia X, flies to Europe, Japan and Korea. This week, the company ordered 300 Airbus A320neos.to expand its routes across Asia and beyond.

It isn’t just the publicity damage. In the past 10 years, according to report by the news agency Reuters, private companies invested just RM535 billion (US$172.4 billion), according to official data. Malaysia’s private investment rate of about 10 percent of GDP is among the lowest in Asia and a third of what it was before the 1998 Asian financial crisis. The government, according to Reuters, contributes around half the investment in Malaysia.

In addition, Malaysia has long been plagued by capital flight, which has been generally regarded as an indication of lack of faith in the country on the part of its businessmen, although in Malaysia’s case the bulk may well be from stolen timber leaving the country from Sarawak and Sabah. Nonetheless, the US-based financial watchdog Global Financial Integrity estimated in a 2010 report that as much as RM888 billion (US$298.3 billion at current exchange rates) had left the country between 2000 and 2008. Illicit financial flows generally involve the transfer of money earned through illegal activities such as corruption, transactions involving contraband goods, criminal activities and efforts to shelter wealth from tax authorities.

AirAsia said the move is a bid to take advantage of access to the Asean secretariat, which is based in Jakarta, in advance of an open skies agreement expected to go into effect in 2015 and which is designed to lower barriers for air travel between the region’s capitals.

Asked why he chose to move the fast-growing airline’s principal corporate base to Jakarta from Kuala Lumpur, Fernandes said: “Asean is based in Jakarta, and Indonesia will be the largest economy in Asean in times to come … And I like it there” – enough, he said, to have impelled him to have already bought a home in Jakarta.

The Indonesia National Air Carriers Association forecasts passenger growth at 10 percent to 15 percent this year. Indonesia’s Central Statistics Agency reported that domestic air traffic grew 22 percent to 53.4 million passengers in 2010 on growing demand from the middle class for domestic flights. That is higher than the 9 percent average increase recorded by Asia-Pacific carriers, according to data from the International Air Transport Association.

“Indonesia is among very few countries that managed to record strong growth in air traffic last year,” said an analyst quoted by the Jakarta Globe. “The lack of available airlines compared to population and geographic conditions is only a sign that there’s a lot of opportunity here.”

(With reporting from the Jakarta Globe)