AIRASIA TO ADD SIX NEW DESTINATION TO CHINA REGION

SEPANG (Malaysia), Feb 3 (Bernama) -- Malaysia's low cost carrier AirAsia
Bhd will introduce six new destinations to the China region by year-end, chief
executive officer Tony Fernandes said Monday.

He said the new destinations would be Tianjin, Chengdu, Chongqing and Xian
in China and Taipei and Kaoshiung in Taiwan. Currently, AirAsia flies to
Guangzhou, Guilin, Haikou, Hangzhou and Shenzhen in China and Hong Kong and
Macao.

Tony said flights to Tianjin and Taipei were expected to be available by the
first half while Chengdu and Chongqing in the second half and Xian by end of the
year.

"From our review we found out that China was phenomenonly strong for us in
2008 and so far since we started flights to China, AirAsia have carried two
million passengers from and into China.

"This shows that Malaysia has become a very important destination for
Chinese people," he said at a press conference here.

He said the review also revealed that the low-cost carrier carried one
million passengers in 2008 alone, hence it was aiming to increase the total
number of passengers on the Malaysia-China routes to 1.5 million.

"The numbers shows my faith that we could be a strong hub here to China as
we now have more flights per week as compared to Changi Airport in Singapore,"
he said.

The review was a "silver lining for the airline despite the current economic
situation and negative news it has been linked to recently," he added.
-- BERNAMA