Businesstimes.com, October 10 2006
AIRASIA Bhd on October 4 began flying daily Hanoi-Kuala Lumpur flights, marking the first service to Vietnam by the budget carrier.
Thai AirAsia, AirAsia's sister company is currently serving two daily Hanoi flights from Bangkok, Thailand.
"Going into our fifth year of operations, we have successfully revolutionised low-cost travel in the region and penetrated many cities in Asean, therefore Hanoi is an inevitable choice," AirAsia group chief executive officer Datuk Tony Fernandes said in a statement yesterday.
"We aim to offer more choices for people to fly and low fare will definitely encourage that," he added.
He said Hanoi is an attractive market due to its strong tourism appeal and there has always been a strong demand for Malaysians as well as those in Asia to visit Vietnam.
"This is why we have decided to fly our A320 for this route, which has a bigger capacity. We feel that the timing is right to add Hanoi to our expanding international network and we will not hesitate to increase frequencies when the demand deems fit," said Fernandes.
In a separate statement, AirAsia and its associates' passenger numbers increased 91.1 per cent to 1.13 million passengers for August 2006 from 591,556 passengers a year earlier.
