Low-cost airline Kingpin prepares for life after AirAsia

One of the best-known names in global aviation is preparing to step back from the front lines. Tony Fernandes, the larger-than-life character credited with revolutionizing budget air travel in Asia, plans to focus more on areas such as health, education and private equity. The 58-year-old Malaysian would be moving on as the industry emerges from Covid. Like other carriers, AirAsia, the group Fernandes founded, was floored by the pandemic. It’s no longer quite the empire it once was, having closed down ventures in Japan and India, but still operates airlines out of Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, and plans a Cambodia launch. “Good leadership is to know when to go,” Fernandes said in a recent interview in Singapore. “Aviation as my journey might be coming to an end. I’ve got to talk about succession planning. Exactly when I press the button, I don’t know, but I want to talk about it because I want to attract the right leaders.” Fernandes, who grew up in Malaysia and the UK, dived into airlines in his mid-thirties, buying AirAsia from a government-owned conglomerate in September 2001 for a solitary Malaysian ringgit, about 30 US cents at the time. After starting out with just two planes, AirAsia rebranded as a low-cost, no-frills carrier in January 2002, offering flights in Malaysia for as little as $3, and in some promotional cases even for free. By early 2004, it was flying from Kuala Lumpur to a handful of international destinations and soon established regional carriers like AirAsia Thailand. With the motto “Now Everyone Can Fly,” AirAsia’s red and white planes became a popular choice for jetting to places such as Bangkok, Singapore, Jakarta and Phnom Penh. The cheap tickets helped supercharge a boom in flying in the region, feeding the needs of a growing middle class wanting to travel and cutting out long boat journeys between thousands of islands. <br/>