AirAsia's Premium Flex to spur more intra-Asia business activities

AirAsia expects its latest service, Premium Flex, designed to cater to the needs of discerning business travellers, will encourage more intra-Asian business activities.

AirAsia Group Chief Executive Officer, Tan Sri Tony Fernandes said Premium Flex is a great product especially for young entrepreneurs and small and medium entreprises (SME) businessmen who are not flying business class in premium airlines but still want the flexibility.

With Premium Flex, guests can look forward to various benefits which provide essential preferences for business travel such as flexibility to change their flight up to two times with no change fee, complimentary 20kg baggage allowance, Xpress boarding and Xpress baggage and other perks.

"It's a new market in Asia that create opportunities for new and young businessmen to expand their business and start growing," he told reporters during the launch here, today.

Fernandes said AirAsia is still focusing in low-cost products but giving more add-on services and choice to its passengers.

"To maintain and remain on the cutting-edge, we must keep innovating and improving our products and services. Ancillary income contributes around 20 per cent to our revenue and we are determined to boost this further with new products and services," he said.

Premium Flex is available for all AirAsia flights, except for Sri Lanka, and flight change is available up to two hours before scheduled time of departure of the original flight; at least three hours before the scheduled time of departure of the new AirAsia flight; and four hours before the scheduled time of the new

AirAsia X flight.

Along with this new product, AirAsia is also offering a 20 per cent discount off all seats on all flights throughout its route network from today until Aug 17, 2014.

This special discount duration also includes AirAsia X flights, and the travel period will be from Aug 12-Dec 14, 2014.

Meanwhile, on the initial public offering (IPO) of its Indonesia arm on the Jakarta Stock Exchange, Fernandes said IPO is not the way the group wants to grow anymore.

"Consolidation and creating holding companies are the way for AirAsia to grow now," he said.