1

Introduction

AirAsia Berhard which is also known as AirAsia, is an airline company which provides air
transportation service. AirAsia was established in 1993 and started operations on 18 November
1996. AirAsia has a very long ownership history. At thevery first, AirAsia was founded by a
government-owned conglomerate, DRB-Hicom.Later on, it was purchased by Tony Fernandez,
former Time Warner executive on 2December 2001. The companys headquarter is in Sepang,
Selangor, Malaysia. Its main base is the Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) at Kuala Lumpur
InternationalAirport. Their operations are carried out in Malaysia, with 3,474 employees.
AirAsiais the leading low fare airline in the Asia and AirAsia is the pioneer of low cost fliyingin
Asia.
AirAsia has been experiencing tremendeous expansion since 2001 as the largest low cost carrier
in Asia. It flies to over 61 domestic and international destinations with 108 routes, and operates
over 400 flights daily and their subsidiary companies located in Thailand and Indonesia. In
Thailand, AirAsia has hub in Suvarnabhumi Airport and in Indonesia at Soekarno-Hatta
International Airport. AirAsia operates scheduled both in domestic and international flight and in
Asia,AirAsia is the largest low fare and no frill airline.

AirAsia philosophy, Now Everyone Can Fly, is related to their vision, that they want to be the
largest low cost airline in Asia and serving 3 billion people who are underserved with poor
connectivity and high fares. Their mission is to be the best company to work for whereby
employees are treated as part of a big family, to create a globally recognized ASEAN brand, to
attain the lowest cost so that everyone can fly with AirAsia, to maintain the highest quality
product, embracing technology to reduce cost and enhance service.

AirAsia focuses on several major issues. First, it is partnering with the worlds most renowned
maintenance providers and to comply with world airline operations to guarantee the passengers
safety. Second, implementing the regions fastest turn around time at only 25 minutes, to assure
lower costs and higher productivity. Third, low fare without compromising on quality and
services. Fourth, streamline operations and lean distribution system. Fifth, applying the point-to-
point network to keep operations simple and low costs.

Adapting those strategies in its business model, AirAsia have won many awards and
recognitions. some lists of awards and recognition in 2008 and 2009. There cent awards are
Airline of the Year by Centre Asia Pasific Aviation (CAPA), BestAsia Low-Cost Carrier by
TTG Travel Awards 2009, and Worlds Best Low-cost Airline By SkytraxIn the competitive
airline industry, AirAsia keep improving their supportive and constructive management by being
supportive and responsive in listening to its employee for any ideas for reducing cost. And as
their philosophy Everyone Can Fly AirAsia its weapon to corner its other competitor is effect
in reducing cost boosted AirAsia to be one of the top in low cost air carrier competition. AirAsia
is leading the way for developing low cost airlines and its promises to revolutionize the
international market place. And for now, many low cost airline companies in some country have
adopted the strategies innovated by AirAsia successfully.

2

Environment
A positive working environment

Airasia create a, diverse, positive, respectful and fun working environment for people of all
backgrounds. Airsia promote and recognise their people based on talent and performance. We
work hard and create a common vision and sense of purpose amongst all fellow employees of
AirAsia.

Airasia commit to giving equal employment opportunities by creating an environment free from
any discrimination, whether due to colour, religion, race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality,
marital status, ancestry, socio-economic status or physical disabilities. They wont accept
bullying, harassment or any other behaviour that can be seen as degrading and threatening.
Airasia focus on what brings people together rather than on what keeps them apart.

Environment inside and outside

Health, safety, nature and the environment

Given the nature of their business, Airasia create an extremely high level of safety, satisfaction
and good health for their guests, themselves, and everyone around us. They minimise
environmental damage by developing, promoting and using environmentally-friendly technology
and practices.

Keeping a drug-free, violence-free workplace

No drugs or any drug-related activities are allowed in AirAsia. Keep our work-place drug-free!
No violence either we sort out issues and disagreement in a civil manner using proper channels
and with respect for all others around us.

Employee Relation

Safety in our operations and in everything we work

Airasia write clear and comprehensive safety policies and procedures, and we adhere to them
strictly. We continually look for opportunities to improve, keep a lookout for possible safety
failings and violations, and report all such instances through the established channels. We will
not do anything that will compromise safety in AirAsia.

Airasia relate with guests, suppliers, competitors and public authorities

Airasia treat our guests with respect and understanding, and protect their personal information
unless they agree for their personal information to be shared. Airasia treat suppliers impartially
and justly. Selection of suppliers must follow established guidelines and rules.

Airasia meet public authorities in an appropriate and open manner. Information meant for the
3

public about the company shall only be supplied by the person responsible for or approved to
make such communications.

Airasia compete between employee

Airasia compete based on superior value propositions by offering products and services at great
prices and quality, and through superior execution of our business models and strategies. Airasia
treat our competitors honestly and professionally. Airasia compete fairly and openly at all levels,
and we compete hard!

Special Events
A special event was held on 24
th
May 2012
Air Asia marked another milestone on the way to becoming the largest A320 operator worldwide
by accepting its 100th aircraft today, celebrating this event with a special touch that underscores
the close relationship established between this low-cost carrier and Airbus.
The carriers latest fleet addition carries the wording: Thank you Louis Gallois on its main
passenger door, saluting the former Airbus CEO who will complete his current role as the CEO
of parent company EADS next week.

During a ceremony at Airbus Toulouse, France delivery centre, the A320 was unveiled in the
presence of Gallois, who was welcomed by Air Asia Group CEO Tony Fernandes, and joined by
Airbus President and CEO Thomas Enders, along with John Leahy, Airbus Chief Operating
Officer Customers. Attending the event were members of the international press, who gathered
in Toulouse for Airbus annual Innovation Days event.

Air Asia has gone from its origins as a two-aircraft airline carrying 200,000 passengers annually
a decade ago to becoming the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) regions leading
low-cost carrier, with the goal of transporting 33 million passengers in 2012.

Gallois has played an enormous role in helping us achieve this growth, and naming the 100th
aircraft after him is one way to thank this friend of our airline for his warmth, friendship,
patience, and especially his belief which is a key element at Airbus, he added. What Airbus
did was believe two guys from the music industry who had a dream about making it easier to fly,
and they have stayed with that belief in helping us deliver on that ambition and transforming
travel in Asia forever.

The airline currently has 375 A320s on order, including Airbus A320neo (new engine option)
version. Fernandes said Air Asias innovative route structure includes 50 percent of routes that
were not previously operated by other carriers, with many of these segments using the A320s
operational flexibility including opening access to many airport



4

Community Relation

AirAsia had taken to increase the fuel efficiency as part of the commitment in their parts to
reduce the carbon footprint as much as possible for the community:

Tankering Fuel There are occasions when it is more cost-effective to carry more fuel on-
board than is necessary, for example when the price of fuel at the destination is significantly
higher than the price at the point of departure, therefore strike an optimum level of fuel carried to
achieve the greatest cost-efficiency.

Water Load Optimise the volume of water carried on-board to reduce the weight of aircraft
with the policy is to fill water tanks.

Aircraft Speed Ensuring their aircraft take off at the optimal speed and subsequently maintain
optimal acceleration until attaining the cruising speed.

Regular Engine Wash Clean engines are more fuel-efficient and increase the interval between
engine overhauls. These initiatives afford us 0.5- 0.7% savings from fuel consumption.

Engine Thrust Rating - Airbus 320 aircraft have two engine ratings (23.5K and 27K). Where
possible, AirAsia use the lower thrust rating to reduce the maintenance costs.
The initiatives action above shown that AirAsia were concerned toward the environmental and
harm that had been caused by them with their unavoidable business nature operation.
5

Therefore with such Public Relation practice this will manage to build AirAsia a good corporate
image to the public that they do care to the community as well. They will reveal the action taken
in their annual Sustainability Report to inform their shareholders.

Publicity

Air Asia does do a lot for publicity stunts, aggressive ads and staying firmly in the public eye.
Do you all remember when Bali suffered the bomb attacks? People just stopped going to Bali.
Stepping up to the plate, Tony Fernandez announced that Air Asia would provide one million
free tickets for flights into Bali. ( Usually they charge higher fares for the return flight).
Immediately Tony Fernandez received huge publicity and the everlasting gratitude of the people
of Bali.


Media Relation
AirAsias has global social media presences on Facebook, Renren, Twitter and Sina, with
Facebook leading the social media pack with 1,300,000 followers. Twitter comes next with
130,000 followers, mostly within a younger age group. Though they have a unified brand image,
AirAsia takes an extra effort to localize; for example, they have set up 11 Facebook pages for
different locations. Country heads determine what can or cannot be said, which is especially
important in Asia, where political, social, economic and technological differences can affect
conversations greatly.
Tiger Airways had many flights cancelled, AirAsia aggressively used the opportunity to present
a cheeky brand image and they integrated their social media and offline media to poke fun at
their competition. Tsunami marketing as quoted by Kathleen Tan, which she casually used as
an analogy as efforts to create newsworthy news. Responses of this campaign? Customers felt
the ad was smart and in fact, they grew to like the brand better. This ad got picked up
internationally.
AirAsia uses social media not to socialize, but to:
Generate buzz and consumer noise
6

Enhance the brand experience
Transform the PR landscape
Humanize their brand
Reduce marketing dollars.
Effects

Company Campaign

The Mind Blowing Fare Campaign is AirAsias first major promotion using the New Skies
system. The successful sale of more than half a million seats in the ongoing promotion shows
that the new system is stable and able to efficiently handle massive sales volume.

Tony Fernandes, Group CEO of AirAsia, said, AirAsias investment in the new booking
engine is clearly paying off. Our New Skies system has revolutionized our internet booking.
Now, we are able to give guests greater flexibility in booking their flights and the ability to
directly manage their bookings. AirAsia is going from strength to strength.
Were happy to offer guests the opportunity to grab the special offers under our Mind Blowing
Fare campaign. The campaign is especially attractive with festive holidays, such as Hari Raya,
coming up, he added.

The Mind Blowing Fare campaign gives guests the chance to fly for RM1* to domestic
destinations such as Alor Setar, Johor Bahru, Kota Bahru, Langkawi and Penang. Other sexy
destinations in the ASEAN region that are also going for the price of RM1* include Krabi,
Phuket, Singapore, Siem Reap, Phnom Penh, Yogyakarta, Bandung, Brunei, Hatyai and Ho Chi
Minh City. Guests wanting to explore destinations beyond ASEAN may opt to head for
Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Trichy, Guilin, Haikou and Macau.

AirAsias offer does not stop at RM1* fares, but continues with greater deals
fromAirAsiaGo.com with free room nights across exciting domestic and international
destinations.

By having such campaign Airasia able to attack many more customer. The effect of having such
practice will bring more benefit for Airasia.






7

Media Analysis Social Media
Instead of utilizing the classical media, say for example newspapers or radio, AirAsia has like
many other modern companies, begun to move in the direction of the youth with respect to more
unconventional media approaches to its campaigning. Their methodology has them focused on
being fresh, energetic, and most important of all driven to meet their goal of operating a people-
centered enterprise. This has led to their great success in the corporate social media arena.
As opposed to other businesses, which struggle to maintain fan bases and to encourage new ones,
AirAsia has used social media instead to build relationships with those around them. Their
willingness to use platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to build strong customer
loyalty and brand recognition has led to their overcoming of much of the competition. This is
also in part thanks to an innovative corporate methodology for forming and maintaining these
relationships as well as strengthening them.
AirAsia has found itself to be adherent to a philosophy called Listen, Engage, Connect, which
has seemingly endeared itself to the people in which the airline serves. Interestingly, the airline is
known not only for how it uses its social media but for who uses it. This is easily seen in the
personality of CEO Tan Sri Dr. Tony Fernandes. He is an example of a man who has
wholeheartedly embraced the philosophy around which he built the enterprise. For him,
seemingly innocuous events make for grand spectacles when they can be introduced on a large
scale to the masses.
The scale of the events being reported, like meeting with Richard Branson, watching public
performances, or even to inform people of more business related matters, have a profound impact
on the way that the industry perceives his organization. A quick tweet or status update can have
the effect of endearing oneself to ones fans. As the CEO of AirAsia Berhad, Aireen Omar, has
also found out, something as simple as instagramming her vacations and giving various sneak
peeks ingratiate her to the populace, helping to drive AirAsias popularity and entice new
customers.
Thus, it could be said that AirAsia does not fit social media as much as social media fits AirAsia.
Its goal to be a people-oriented company leads it to the mass marketing and personalizing
atmosphere of social media. For a company such as this, there is no better way to distribute
information and build clientel in a fun and informative way. And this has been recognized by the
collective CEOs of AirAsia, that something as simple as the tweet does not represent a way to
only share information but rather is a way to connect with the customers on a personal and
emotional level.
Fans of the corporation feel as if they are in some way a part of the enterprise. This becomes
more apparent when the company response to the tweets of its customers, and AirAsia has been
ranked among the top companies for doing so. It shows to their customers that not only are they
8

dedicated to offering low prices but that they are dedicated to respecting the values and the time
of the people whom they serve.

It seems like AirAsia has covered its bases with regards to social media, however there is always
room to grow and climb. As new technologies and applications are produced one can be sure that
AirAsia will be among the first to implement the tools as part of their arsenal. Their success in
the social media field has even gone so far as to be noticed by major news outlets and have over
1.8 million likes on Facebook. With this, AirAsia stands to be a powerhouse in future markets.

Airasia Crisis in Vietnam

On August 8, 2012, AirAsia, the worlds best low-cost airline, opened their regional headquarter
in Jakarta to enhance their operational effectiveness in Southeast Asia.

AirAsia Groups CEO Tony Fernandes commented at the event that The AirAsia ASEAN
regional office would help the airline to better prepare itself for the implementation of the
ASEAN Open Sky policy and the ASEAN Economic Communityin 2015..

Besides Indonesia, ASEAN comprises Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia,
Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

However, in one of the event photos that the LCC posted on Facebook, where their flight crew
spotted traditional dresses from ASEAN countries to promote their diversity of destinations, the
Ao Dai (traditional dress of Vietnam) was nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was a lady wearing
a cheongsam, a body-hugging one-piece Chinese dress for women

The photo was later picked up by the hawking-eyes of Vietnamese netizens and quickly spread
like wildfire through the local online community. Hundreds of angry comments were posted on
the photo to vent the anger and suggest boycotting the airline. Until the point of this writing, the
photo was still not taken down yet.

Social media, again, showed their prowess as the main engine behind the internet rage. Major
local fan pages with hundreds of thousand followers posted about the story and asked for
boycotting the LCC. Hot bloggers jumped in the conversation with their anger over the national
dress mis-representation. Local popular newspapers also featured the news, such as this Thanh
Nien Newspaper article.

9

After this morning, it seemed like the incident will even go further than yesterday when the event
happened, and AirAsia will likely be simmered in a big PR crisis for the Vietnam market. It does
affect the companys latest effort in penetrating the market.

Strangely, the PR and Social Media team at the LCC did not take any prompt measure to solve
this situation. Instead, they kept the photo and tried to talk their way out of this situation, which
further angers the local netizens
However, the explanation is completely in contrast to the fact highlighted in the original article
that Besides Indonesia, ASEAN comprises Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia,
Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. There are two possible scenarios:
1/ They did not have Vietnameses traditional dress in the photo; 2/ They mis-represented the
Vietnam with cheongsam dress.
For an international company like AirAsia, cultural sensitivity should be their no.1 priority.
However, they slipped on this case and hurt the pride of Vietnamese citizens.
At the moment, there are ongoing political tensions between nations in the region over the China
Sea (locally referred to as East Sea) issue, so it is a very sensitive time for such a case to
happen.
Why it happened and How to solve it
First of all, we must recognize we have a case of nationalism and business interest conflict here.
AirAsia is faring quite well in Vietnam, and they are one of a few LCCs in this potential market.
When they insulted the national pride of a country, either by mistake or on purpose, it would turn
out to be bad for their business.
The company has let the incident prolong for a few days, and has not taken any decisive action to
put an end to this crisis. Meanwhile, the photo is still kept on their Facebook fan pages and still
being shared around the internet.
We must advocate the great impact this incident has caused to the companys PR, and this blows
up within a few days thanks to the prowess of social media.
There are a number of factors to be considered in the AirAsias corrective actions so far:
1/ They refused to admit what they did is wrong.
2/ They refused to apologize to Vietnamese netizens.
3/ They issued a vague explanations.
4/ They made the Vietnamese netizens, their potential customers, even angrier.
10

5/ They let the crisis go on for so long and without a solution.

There are a number of explanation to their crisis management strategy in this situation:
1/ They do not want to admit they are wrong.
2/ (Maybe) they want to ride on this wave to spread awareness of their brand, even though it is
negative. It is highly unlikely, however still an approach worth looking out for.
3/ They plan to let the case die down by itself.
In either cases, great damage will be done to their business in Vietnam if the case gets
unresolved.
We still did not see any involvement from their senior management team in the social media
aspect of the case.

Some actions they could have taken:
1/ Take down the photo when the incident started to break out. It does not matter whethere they
are right or wrong, the motto Customer is always right should be in the company culture. They
made their customers angry, and they are still doing it.
2/ Discuss within their management team to decide which PR approach they should take in order
to mitigate the damage.
3/ Run a media monitoring service to monitor the crisis, both online and offline.
4/ Decide an official company stance on the situation.
4/ Issue an official statement on their Facebook fan page, where everything began, with a clear,
straight-forward explanation.
5/ Contact the public media outlets to rectify the situation.








11

Conclusion
The aim of this report was to carry out PR of Airasia Asias largest low-cost no-frills airline.
From this it became evident that the organization operates in a complex environment with fast
changing influences that affect its business both beneficially and unfavorably.
In general Airasia PR practice bring effect to the company whether its positive or negative. PR
practice is capable to bring more customer to Airasia. PR practice is generally need internally
and externally. PR plays a great role in Airasia.

References

AirAsia (2012). AirAsia Berhad Annual Report 2012

AirAsia (2013). Retrieve on 1
st
August 2013 from http://www.thejakartapost.com

AirAsia (2013). Retrieve on 1
st
August 2013 from http://marketingguyinvietnam.wordpress.com/

AirAsia (2012). Retrieve on 30 July 2013 from http://www.airasia.com

AirAsia (2012). Retrieve on 1
st
August 2013 from http://www.airbus.com/newsevents/news-
events-single