Last week Capital A (the parent company of AirAsia) CEO Tony Fernandes highlighted the importance of AirAsia Philippines to the group’s plans and followed that up with a long set of initiatives this week.
The Fernandes Philippines Plan
In addition to expanding AirAsia Philippines, its parent company, Capital A, plans to launch a logistics business and an aircraft maintenance, repair, and overhaul facility in the country.
Photo: MDV Edwards | Shutterstock
Fernandes said the group aims to create more jobs for Filipinos as part of AirAsia Philippines’ short and long-term plans. He added:
“I am excited to put in more investments in the Philippines. We have a great logistics business coming – Teleport Philippines, which we think will be great for e-commerce providers in the Philippines to sell their goods all over.
“We want to build an engineering company here, on top of Lufthansa Technik’s [operation]. We would like to bring ADE, which is a really fantastic company.”
Asia Digital Engineering (ADE) is the Malaysian-based engineering business of Capital A, which provides heavy maintenance, repairs, and overhaul (MRO) services for the group’s commercial aircraft. It is currently operating from leased sites with a new hangar, capable of accommodating 14 narrowbodies, under construction. ADE is working to return the rest of AirAsia’s aircraft into service, with each of the group’s airlines straining to meet the heavy demand and crying out for more capacity.
Photo: Phuong D. Nguyen/Shutterstock
Teleport was established in 2018 to consolidate the aircraft belly capacity of all AirAsia airlines under a single comprehensive network. It utilizes more than 200 widebody and narrowbody aircraft across the ASEAN region, including passenger and freighter aircraft. Teleport’s key customer segments include global freight forwarders and e-commerce marketplaces, and businesses looking to easily move their cargo faster across Asia-Pacific.
AirAsia is working with a clear post-pandemic strategy that requires some significant changes across the Philippines’ operations. The Teleport and ADE businesses will be supported by increasing the AirAsia Philippines fleet “to sustain route expansion both domestically and internationally.” Fernandes explained his thinking by saying:
“Leisure, migration workforce and SME travel currently comprise pent-up demand for air travel. 80% of AirAsia’s South-East Asia traffic consists of shorter trips and low-cost travel. With this, we’d like to further connect the Philippines to other ASEAN destinations.”
The strategy means more people
Adding new Airbus A320 or A330 aircraft is one thing, but finding the pilots, cabin crew, and associated operational staff is quite another in this market of people shortages.
Photo: Airbus
AirAsia anticipates hiring an additional 1,000 employees to support the Philippines expansion in the next three years. This is on top of the 6,000 jobs excepted to be generated by the introduction of Capital A’s ride-hailing business in the country.
Fernandes added that during the pandemic his priorities were to survive, bring back people, and recruit more people.
“Our biggest asset is actually people. People are smart here, people are hard-working, and they have a wonderful personality. So for us, we will grow all four lines of Capital A in the Philippines.”