AirAsia X CEO Update

Transcript

Benyamin Ismail:I mean, in terms of Sapporo, we're starting 1st October. The sales is looking really good, so for December, January, February, March, we're pretty much full. I think that's a very seasonal market, but I think for us, we just want to make sure that we try to educate people that it's actually a summer destination as well, spring destination, and autumn. A thick word. We're doing a bit of work with the agents in Japan, so we're seeing a lot of traction there, even post-March, so that's pretty good. For Hawaii, it's a very process-orientated task in trying to get that route through, especially dealing with authorities in America, but we're getting there. I think we're very new at it, you know, trying to meet the ground handlers, which we have no contacts with, trying to meet the caterings and all that kind of stuff takes a while. So in terms of FAA approval, we should be getting it in a month or so, and then after that we need to get JCAP approval in Japan, and once we get that, we're ready for sale. So my target is trying to get it operating before Christmas, so to get that peak period going into the new year. One is coming into Thailand. The other 2 we're looking at is going to go one to Thailand and potentially the other one's coming in to replace one of our older aircraft. We have one older aircraft that's been with us for about 7 years, so we're going to replace that. The lease is being returned, so it's really— it's a net-off. But other than that, that's pretty much it that we're looking at. So, and basically what we're trying to do is trying to bank on managing our capacity for next year, so that's what's going to happen. So the wet lease comes back in October, so pretty much from November onwards we're full-blown high utilisation. So really what we're doing is we're ramping up capacity. In terms of key routes, we're ramping capacity into Australia because it's going to peak, right? So we're ramping Japan, we're ramping Korea, so that's what we're doing. And then it slows down a little bit, tapers a bit during second quarter, and we'll do short-term lease. I think the strategy now is not to have aircraft away too long on a year lease or 2-year lease, so now we're going to just focus on just pockets of wet leases, 2-3 months. Initially, we had a lot of plans for them, but there's a lot of external concerns that has happened, that's hit both countries. I think for Thailand, it's been downgraded to Cat 2, so a lot of their growth plans in terms of new markets, especially Japan and Korea, has been put back. So, and then they're applying for any other routes, they're pushing for China now. So they pretty much just slowed down on one aircraft, but other than that, they're on target to take a bit more. For Indonesia, it's a lot of regulations that's been put around, pushed around within the country, so I think what we want to do is to make sure that we We addressed that and let them be in operation. But the good thing about Indonesia is there are 2 routes. Sydney and Melbourne is doing very well. So, I mean, I think we've been quite surprised with the load. So we'll see how that goes. China? China's been massive for us. So we've seen huge recovery. I mean, I've just met some people here just now and just wanting to see whether we can apply for more routes, you know, more, more, more frequencies. So we're trying that really hard. For Korea, yes, you're right, we was hit by MERS. We saw that in our loads for second quarter. It was an all-time low, 68%. And that's just not Mersin. We had Kathmandu as well, which had earthquakes. So a double dose of that in one quarter took a hit on us. But moving into third, Korea is recovering. We've seen loads picking up. Not as much as we would like, but I think a lot of work needs to be done. But we should be hitting about in the high 70s for loads for third quarter. Cool. Oh, it's improved a lot. You know, I think, you know, in terms of our loads, it's been pretty full on our flights. Sydney is doing really well. Melbourne is super well. Gold Coast, I think, is massive. I think with MAS pulling out of Brisbane, it's just an automatic for us to increase frequency. So we're looking at that to see what we can do. We are working with the airports to see what's the best optimal timings and frequency. So we're working that. So, and Perth, I was just meeting the team, you know, it's something that we want to work on as well. So Australia is recovering really, really well. Yeah. Which is good.

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