Annual Report 2020

Fees Fees are charged on a number of services provided such as the purchase of tickets at the counter, changes made to bookings, fees for infants as well as for payments made with credit cards. During the year, certain fees were waived due to Covid-19. At the same time, to encourage guests to avail of the self-check-in service available in Brunei, Cambodia, Hawaii, India, Laos, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam, we introduced a fee for international flight check-in at the counter. In-flight Food & Beverage In-flight Food & Beverage was severely disrupted not just by the reduction in the number of flights and guests carried, but also by the prohibition on serving food onboard for at least six months during the year in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. On flights where food could be served, we ensured adherence to all SOPs, while enhancing our back-end food handling and logistics procedures to ensure the highest level of hygiene and food safety. We also made available our menu and catered to specific food requests, on chartered flights. Meanwhile, we continued to innovate our digital platforms to create optimum efficiency, leveraging predictive demand planning. With machine learning, for example, we were able to reduce food inventory waste by more than 50%. We also implemented a new Warehouse Management System (WMS) to enable complete automation and tracking of our logistics processes. In-flight, we launched ePOS 2.0 for enhanced interaction with guests, and replaced printed catalogues with digital catalogues for contactless purchase. In 2021, we will roll out the predictive demand planning system ePOS 2.0 and WMS in our other Asean markets. Further revolutionising our food delivery, we plan to enable direct orders from mobiles in-flight. Duty Free Duty Free is now part of our digital platform, and has been rebranded as airasia beauty, with an expanded range of items on offer including AirAsia merchandise. Our new e-commerce venture made its debut in Malaysia in August, followed by the Philippines in December, offering goods at duty- free prices for guests who are flying international routes, and at duty-paid prices for everyone else. Purchases can be picked up in-flight, at the airport or delivered to the home. To be able to manage a significantly expanded inventory, and to enhance our stock visibility, we have implemented a new digitalised WMS. airasia beauty will be launched in Thailand and Indonesia in 2021. AirAsia WiFi In 2014, AirAsia became one of the first airlines in the region to offer WiFi services in-flight, with ROKKI. This has evolved into our current high-speed AirAsia WiFi, powered by Inmarsat’s GX network, which enables guests to perform real-time video streaming. In addition, they can access a range of entertainment services and play games, read/watch the news as well as listen to music for free, as these are hosted on a server in the aircraft itself. The aircraft server also supports e-commerce services with a choice of in-flight fulfillment or pick-up at the airport, or home delivery. Spurred by Covid-19, in 2020 we leveraged AirAsia WiFi to expedite our cabin digitisation efforts for an enhanced contactless experience. We have, for example, removed physical copies of our in-flight magazine (Travel360), Santan menu and duty-free catalogue, incorporating these into the wifi portal. Moving forward, passengers will also be able to purchase their food and beverages as well as duty-free products via AirAsia WiFi. 79 ANNUAL REPORT 2020