Tony Fernandes, FAX & Firefly
Thursday, April 12th, 2007 | 3:30 pm @ SK
Last year, with great promise, Fly Asian Express (FAX) founded by entrepreneur and businessman Tony Fernandes took over the rural air services operations from Malaysian Airlines (MAS) under the national air route rationalization exercise last year. The strategy as quoted from the website:
FAX, which calls itself a ‘flexi airline’, is committed in providing some of traditional airline convenience at affordable fares, by adopting innovative fare structures to cater to the different market segments […]
Now, Tony Fernandes intends to relinquish the rural air services to Firefly, citing rationalization as the main reason.
"Logical thing to do," he said.
Yes, some people do argue that business is a business, in the end of the day, it’s the bottomline of a company that matters.
If so, remain the status quo, make them compete with each other, which I believe will improve the quality of service provided to another level, creating a long term gain for the regional aviation industry, if not domestic.
Or afterall, is it an exit strategy to concentrate on the more lucrative long-haul AirAsia X? Quote:
I wonder how many people in Malaysia Airlines and the industry will be thrilled by this "dramatic move". If Tony gets what he wants - and Tony usually gets what he wants - Malaysia Airlines will get back all the rural routes whether it likes it or not (and the national carrier’s Business Turnaround Plan is probably screwed!).
But Tony’s FAX gets to focus on the more lucrative long-haul AirAsia X operations. Cool?
Rather than doing the logical thing, it’d be doing more good than harm for Transport Minister Chan Kong Choy to do the right thing.
April 12th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Hmm..i think he is just expressing his dissastifcation on MAS’s Firefly in another way.
April 13th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Tony is hitting the ball back to MAS. Looking from a company point of view, most of the routes are not profitable and since MAS has Fireflz, it is a good enough reason to give it back to them, while FAX concentrate on more profitable routes.
I believe, much of the routes are for community service rather than having real monetary value.
April 13th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
I don’t know as much about FAX as I do about Firefly Airlines. However, I haven’t ever seen any company give up profitable operations, so I doubt that the routes are profitable. The answer really is for Malaysia to open its skies to competition, the private sector will ensure that profitable routes are covered. Unprofitable routes - what’s the point in covering them?
April 25th, 2007 at 3:33 am
July 25th, 2007 at 8:55 am
Wowww….what a challenging business..This is a good situation in bringing business competetiveness which it will benefit us as a consumer of their services. Let see http://www.fireflyz.com.my develop their business.
October 4th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Air Asia has thinks that they have grwon sooooo Big that they treat customer with arrogance now. To grown one needs to be honest, and neither Tony nor Air Asia has that. I was cheated out-right by a girl in the Matta Fair and given all sorts of wrong information and have been thrown around from one officer to another for almost tow weeks now.
U have cheated now only me, but of 60 year old man who wanted to see his daugher and two little kids who wanted the experience of flying!!!!.
LIERS and CHEATERS are AIR ASIA!!!!
May 16th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Yeah…Air Asia truly LOSER! Tony mom’s boy and loser too…looking at him crying over to his "mum" on TV yesterday,…walau..can’t tahan …excuse me la…so big already still need protection from "mum" ar…so sad..