00:05now the Malaysian low-cost airline AirAsia is set to roll out new flights connecting
00:11Londoners and Europeans to the Middle East and Southeast Asia it's part of plans to expand the
00:17network as Tony Fernandez the CEO of its parent company Capital A told my colleague Juliet Mann
00:24yeah I mean I think we've built this phenomenal network in Asia we now after restructuring are
00:32going to merge AirAsia and AirAsia X into one airline AirAsia and Airbus have given us a fantastic
00:39set of planes the 321 long range and the 321 extra long range so put that all together we think
00:49we
00:49can connect Africa and Europe via Bahrain to the amazing network we've built in Asia so two-way
00:57passenger flows and becoming a low-cost carrier that emulates Emirates and Qatar in the first instance
01:05we're going to use fifth freedom and seventh freedom to use our existing 330s to fly into London and
01:13various places in Europe and eventually use narrow body to fly all over Europe and area and Africa
01:21bringing low fares and inclusive travel and growing the market it's not the first time though that
01:27you've tried to get this route off the ground but you you really have been pushing this one-stop network
01:34model to connect Asia and beyond so why is this strategy so central to your growth and can it really
01:41compete with full-service long-haul carriers yeah I mean I think the the difference this time and last
01:47time was one AirAsia X was a separate airline now we're putting it all together we have a massive
01:52network in Asia behind it so passengers through the hub into London as the first route will be coming
02:00from very many places emulating what Qatar and Emirates do they fly everyone into Dubai and then fly
02:07them all out in in different directions so that's number one number two is a big change in aircraft when
02:15we flew to
02:16London last time it was a 340 expensive aircraft high fuel burn not number not a lot of seats but
02:23now we have a
02:24330 to kick this route off but eventually we'll have narrow body flying all over it so cost will be
02:31substantial the key for us is to bring a
02:35differentiated product on the cost scale to increase the market penetration and then the third point well of course the
02:42focus is on
02:44London AirAsia is all about flying to secondary and tertiary cities providing connectivity that just isn't there if you look
02:51in China we fly more to
02:53Shantou than we do to Shanghai we create a really amazing connectivity to places that have them connected so the
03:02long-term vision of our
03:03strategy here via Bahrain is to connect secondary and tertiary cities and you talk about price being so important to
03:11think about it
03:11Southeast Asia's low-cost market is booming again but it's intensely competitive some would say saturated and very price competitive
03:20what is going to give you that edge
03:23Oh no I mean I mean we kicked it off before AirAsia there was no low-cost market what gives
03:29us the edge low-cost frequency network winning the world's best low-cost airline 16 times in a row
03:36but but aside from that Asia's got 3 billion people and there's a whole lot more growth to come so
03:44I think it's not saturated as there's as an enormous amount of growth still to come and we have an
03:50order book to take that growth we have an
03:52another 351 planes to come from my 321 order and we're looking at a substantial order in the next month
03:58to boost our fleet we're talking about boosting your fleet China's Comac C919 is emerging as a potential alternative to
04:09Airbus and to what Boeing can offer is that on your shopping list absolutely we've been in discussion with them
04:16we think it's good plane
04:18you know we're aggressive on what we need we need we need a good price but we think the product
04:24is great we are in heavy discussions with them and it's definitely very much on our radar
04:32you
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