SEPANG, 1 August 2018: Air Asia issued a rebuttal to a Malaysia Airports statement, released 24 July, that claimed the airline benefited from incentives to the tune of MYR376 million up until 2017.
In its rebuttal, attributed to AirAsia Malaysia CEO Riad Asmat, the airline said three incentives schemes were applicable to all airlines not just AirAsia.
“We refer to the statement titled ‘Low-cost travel growth in Malaysia boomed in the last decade’ made by Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB)” the airline CEO explained.
“The three incentive schemes highlighted by MAHB, namely the Airlines Recovery Plan (ARP), Airlines Incentive Programme (I) and Airlines Incentive Programme (II), were applicable to all airlines… There was no special treatment. We merely made the best use of available incentives.”
The airline CEO argued that the airline, since its formation in 2001, had contributed at least MYR3.5 billion in revenue to MAHB in the form of aeronautical charges — landing, parking, aerobridges, check-in counters, Passenger Service Charges (PSC) and Passenger Security Service Charges (PSSC) — and other charges, such as rental, utilities.
“For every MYR1 in incentives we get, we give back at least MYR9.33 to MAHB, and that is just in terms of direct contributions. If we look at indirect contributions from the retail, F&B and duty-free revenue that MAHB earns from our guests, that is another RM44.39 per RM1 in incentives during 2017 and just for Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 (KLIA2).”
Acknowledging MAHB played a “big part in our early success” by providing incentives and a low-cost carrier terminal (LCCT) the airline CEO said “MAHB has undone much of this good work.”
Malaysia was the first country in Asia to have an LCC terminal. Now, there are none left. Meanwhile, the rest of the world continues to move towards LCC terminals —
Tokyo Narita, Osaka Kansai and Frankfurt all understand the need for dedicated low-cost infrastructure. In time, we hope MAHB will come to the same realisation so that, together, we can make Malaysia the “Dubai of Asia”, he concluded.
