Word: airasia
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...only moments before takeoff when Tony Fernandes, CEO of high-flying budget airline AirAsia, rushes onto a plane destined for the Malaysian resort town of Kota Kinabalu. But there's no plum seat waiting for him. Even top managers at no-frills airlines don't get any frills. Fernandes treks through the crowded plane searching for an empty chair, ending up in one of the last rows. When flight attendants appear with a cart of sodas and instant noodles for sale, he plunks down 80¢ for a can of Milo chocolate drink. Fernandes then spends much of the two-hour...
...movement. A 12-year veteran of Warner Music in Asia, Fernandes sold his pricey AOL Time Warner stock options and in 2001 bought into a sleepy two-plane airline in Kuala Lumpur. He now has 22 planes and is seeking to buy 80 more over the next eight years. AirAsia has gone from 12 flights a day to 100, including runs from Kuala Lumpur to Jakarta, from Bangkok to the gambling mecca of Macau and even flights to Bali. He's also eyeing China and India. Boasts Fernandes: "We have transformed the way people think about flying...
...plane. Enter Oasis Hong Kong Airlines, a start-up budget carrier founded by Raymond C. Lee, 49, a property developer who is investing in the venture along with VTech Holdings chairman Allan Wong. Lee has a distinctive plan to compete with other upstarts like Tiger Airways in Singapore and AirAsia in Malaysia: fly to European cities--perhaps Berlin, Brussels, Milan, Vienna--where no other Asian airline goes direct. "Instead of trying to steal someone else's lunch, we're creating a market where a market does not even exist," says Lee. --By Nellie Huang/Hong Kong...
Boeing CEO Harry Stonecipher spent last Christmas at his St. Petersburg, Fla., home. He wasn't happy about that. Angered because key airlines like AirAsia and Air Berlin were buying rival Airbus planes, all too aware that the European manufacturer would soon be rolling out its new 555-seat, double-decker A380 jumbo liner, Stonecipher had told his salespeople he would travel anywhere in the world, even on Christmas Day, if he was needed to close a deal. Yet no one called. "The whole idea is that I will go anywhere for them," he says...
Boeing CEO Harry Stonecipher spent last Christmas at his St. Petersburg, Florida, home. He wasn't happy about that. Angered because carriers like AirAsia and Air Berlin were buying rival Airbus planes, all too aware that the European manufacturer would soon be rolling out its 555-seat, double-decker A380 jumbo liner - and was also developing a smaller plane, the A350, to compete with his new baby, the Boeing 737 - Stonecipher had told his salespeople he would travel anywhere in the world, even on Christmas Day, if he was needed to close a deal. No one called. "That troubled...