AirAsia India to break-even in a year: Tony Fernandes

CEO Mittu Chandilya said AirAsia will retain the Rs 990 fare even when the company goes for expansion of new routes

Air Asia, the low-cost airline, would take at least one year to break-even in its Indian operations, said Tony Fernandes, group chief executive officer, on Thursday.

“We are very excited to be in India. We need to accelerate the planes coming here,” he said. Earlier, the company had said it would achieve the break-even in four months. Mittu Chandilya, CEO of AirAsia India said the focus of the airline would be to keep its costs low and drive up revenues.

For this, the strategy even means counting the numbers of papers that they print or number of cups of coffee they drink in their offices. Even reducing costs, the carrier wanted to keep the quality high, he told reporters.

“We are lot more bullish about Indian market. There is no secret recipe to doing that. We keep our costs low. We are very much conscious about the costs and the discipline about keeping everything low. There is no big secret thing to do this," he said.

“This is about volume. The secret weapon is to grow very quickly and become a mass-market company. If we are doing one flight a day, our aim is to make 10 flights a day. Second, infrastructure is there and if we can use it more we can offer less cost per passenger,” said Fernandes.

He said their mantra is to unbundle fare structure. "We charge for food and extra luggage. Why should one passenger who is carrying less luggage subsidise the other who is carrying more," he questioned.

"The key to this is about volume and make it affordable, which I think is fantastic," he added.

Chandilya also said AirAsia will retain the Rs 990 fare even when the company goes for expansion of new routes. It is expected to announce new routes next week.