KUALA LUMPUR – The Indian civil aviation minister set the industry astir when he said AirAsia Group Bhd will close its affiliate operations in the country, a statement that his office later marked as a miscommunication.
The comments came over the weekend when Hardeep Singh Puri was asked why AirAsia has suspended its Chandigarh flights.
“AirAsia’s shop is shutting down,” he said.
“Their parent company has problems.”
AirAsia India is majority-owned by conglomerate Tata Group. Its spokesman declined to comment on the matter.
Bloomberg reported a Civil Aviation Ministry spokesman as saying Puri’s remarks had been taken out of context.
This will not be AirAsia’s first termination of operations overseas. The low-cost carrier has announced the cessation of AirAsia Japan Co Ltd’s operations to reduce the cash burn for the company and group.
AirAsia posted its biggest-ever quarterly loss in August, and is looking to raise as much as RM2.5 billion by year-end.
AirAsia India has never posted a profit since operations began in 2014. India is one of the world’s most difficult markets, with high fuel taxes and even higher fares.
The carrier, which has a market share of 6.8%, employs more than 3,000 people in the South Asian country. – The Vibes, October 5, 2020
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