AirAsia X co-founder Tony Fernandes said he is preparing to launch a new airline, betting that expanding while the aviation industry’s being roiled by high oil prices will pay off in the future.
The new airline will be announced in the next month or two, Fernandes said in a video interview from Montreal late on Wednesday. The low-cost Southeast Asian carrier group is moving some planes for the business it is starting, he said, without providing further details.
The expansion would come on the heels of AirAsia’s multibillion-dollar order for what Prime Minister Mark Carney lauded as the largest purchase ever of Canadian-made commercial aircraft. The order, involving 150 Airbus A220 planes, is part of the businessman’s plans to expand AirAsia’s fleet with smaller, nimbler planes that will fly passengers to all corners of Asia.
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“Why waste a crisis? There are opportunities in a crisis,” Fernandes, 62, said. “We can’t control what happens in the Middle East, but we have to take a view that it’s not going to last for two years.”
It is a bold bet, even for a company that has made unconventional choices before. The company’s decision to avoid hedging fuel costs has contributed to shares of AirAsia tumbling about 35 per cent since the Iran war started, making it the worst performer on the Bloomberg World Airlines index during the period.
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Fernandes remained defiant on hedging fuel costs, predicting oil prices will eventually come back down.