AIRASIA NOW "THE NEW GIRL" IN SINGAPORE

REPEAT: Correcting phrase in graf 2:)




By Zakaria Abdul Wahab

SINGAPORE, March 31 (Bernama) -- "The new girl has finally arrived. She's
twice the fun and half the price". Don't be mistaken and be easily excited about
the cry. It is not about a girl coming to town and soliciting for customers.

It is actually the newly revived tagline of low-cost carrier AirAsia for
its promotion drive to sell its inaugural air services departing from Singapore
to four Indonesian cities of Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta and Bali.

AirAsia group chief executive officer (CEO) Tony Fernandes was
here Tuesday together with AirAsia Indonesia CEO Dharmadi to reveal the
suggestive catchphrase.

Speaking at the grand launch of the new routes, Fernandes said the tagline
was first advertised in the local newspapers in 2004 to introduce AirAsia then,
except that the old first phrase began with "There's a new girl in town", and he
was thrilled by the long journey (seven years) he took to establish the
airline's presence in the city state.

He said since the new air services began operation exactly a week ago (March
24), AirAsia managed to sell over 90,000 seats for the four Indonesian routes.

Fernandes said with the latest Indonesian flights, and flights from the
Malaysian cities of Kuala Lumpur, Kuching, Kota Kinabalu, as well as Bangkok and
Phuket in Thailand, AirAsia was now operating 20 flights daily into Singapore.

AirAsia hoped to more than double the number to 50 flights daily in next two
years when the frequency of the existing routes were increased and more new air
routes to the city-state were established, he said.

The new routes the airline is looking at are Penang and Langkawi in Malaysia
as well as Medan and Surabaya in Indonesia.

Fernandes said AirAsia was expecting to carry a total of two million
passengers to and from Singapore this year.

The AirAsia CEO was optimistic when asked whether the ongoing economic
recession would eventually clip the wing of the airline, saying he was positive
about the matter as the company's growth was not slowing down.

According to him, AirAsia was bucking the trend as the performance of the
company for the first quarter of this year was good, and he expects the positive
results to continue in the successive remaining quarters.

Fernandes said what mattered most was that AirAsia must continue "to provide
better value, ease of travel with good connectivity and high quality of
services" to its passengers as these were what they were looking for.

He said that "AirAsia's latest Indonesia-Singapore link forms the final
piece of our network jigsaw puzzle as it resembles the importance of AirAsia
network, making it the most powerful in Asia".

Fernandes said AirAsia also planned to operate into Japan either by the end
of this year or in the first quarter of 2010, adding that the airline would
sponsor a Japanese sports team to stamp its mark there.

The four direct scheduled flights from Singapore operate twice daily to
Jakarta, and daily to Bali, Bandung and Yogyakarta.

-- BERNAMA