In 2001, former music executive Tony Fernandes bought the heavily-indebted firm for a token sum of 25 cents. Keeping the brand name, he created Asia's first low-cost airline, taking on local established rivals such as Malaysia Airlines and Australia's Qantas.
With the slogan "Now Everyone Can Fly", AirAsia now covers approximately 100 destinations across more than 15 countries, although many of these flights are serviced by associates and subsidiaries that use the company's brand name.......
It is one of these associates, Indonesia AirAsia, which was operating flight QZ8501 from Surabaya to Singapore when it lost contact with air traffic control on Sunday morning.
It flies Airbus A320 aircraft along more than 30 routes, to destinations in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Australia..........
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The boss of AirAsia Group, Tony Fernandes, is also chairman of Queens Park Rangers football club in the UK
. It offers no business or first class seats, and the average fare is roughly 170 Malaysian ringgit (£30; $48).
In the three months to the end of September, the AirAsia group made a pre-tax profit of 26.5m Malaysian ringgit (£4.8m; $7.6m), and carried almost 5.3 million passengers. .....
However, the number of passengers carried by Indonesia AirAsia was down by 10% in the same period, dropping to 1.85 million after the airline cut some of its routes.
In 2013, it carried almost 8 million passengers in total.....
- the Airbus single-aisle A320. The A320 seats between 150 and 180 passengers,
AirAsia's brand image is closely tied with its chief executive, Malaysian entrepreneur Tony Fernandes, who took over operations in 2001. Almost always in jeans and an AirAsia cap when interviewed, Mr Fernandes was seen as Malaysia's answer to Richard Branson.
He's listed as one of the richest men in Malaysia and has always been adept at spinning his marketing message out to the media. With this plane's disappearance, he's wasted no time in tweeting out messages of support to the family and has already arrived in Surabaya along with members of the Indonesian affiliate of AirAsia.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-30615449
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