While all our airline operating companies (collectively known as our AOCs) saw a marked improvement in performance in the last quarter of 2021, AirAsia Philippines exceeded expectations, recording its highest booking sales in December since the pandemic started. This was aided by the fact that in December, it became the first airline within AirAsia to resume international flights to Hong Kong while also launching a new route from Manila to Singapore. For the rest of the year, AirAsia Philippines, together with the other AOCs, concentrated on domestic routes, capitalising on the intermittent periods when local travel was permitted. In addition to focusing on popular pre-Covid routes, our AOCs introduced a total of 21 new skybridges to help our guests in Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia connect to more destinations within their respective countries safely and affordably. FACES, for use along the guest’s entire journey through airports – from check-in to baggage drop off and boarding at the departure lounge; as well as to order and pay for the many travel and lifestyle offerings on the airasia Super App. FACES is also being rolled out in our key markets, namely Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. In addition, we are integrating our contactless digital health passport Scan2Fly into FACES so that guests will only need to have their faces scanned in order to provide all the verified documentation they require in real time for their journey. These include visas, vaccination certifications and results of Covid-19 tests. Aviation 2021 was even more challenging than 2020 for our airlines, given that international flight operations were disrupted for the full year, as opposed to just the second to fourth quarters previously. However, the situation picked up towards year end when the effects of mass vaccination began to be evident. Along with a decline in Covid-19 infections, travel lanes started to emerge followed by the gradual opening of domestic and, to a slight extent, international borders. To meet strong pent-up demand, which was further fuelled by the year-end holidays, AirAsia Aviation Group Ltd (AAAGL), the holding company for the airline group, resumed routes that had been dormant for most of the last two years while increasing frequencies to the more popular destinations. Through strict fleet and network optimisation and by matching capacity with demand, our consolidated AOCs (AirAsia Malaysia, AirAsia Indonesia and AirAsia Philippines) managed to keep passenger loads healthy, averaging a very encouraging 74% for the year as a whole. Nonetheless, frequent lockdowns resulted in a 64% drop in capacity compared to 2020. Making the most of the downtime, AirAsia has pushed ahead with various digital innovations which are contributing to safer contactless travel while also helping to reduce costs. A key development was to extend our facial biometric technology, “About 43% of AirAsia aircraft are back in the sky, and the Group is hopeful that the Malaysian Government will follow in the steps of our neighbouring countries in the near future.” In addition to FACES, AirAsia has launched contactless payment options using electronic data capture (EDC) machines including tap2phone with the objective of creating a safer and more convenient journey for our guests. Testament to the fact that our guests appreciate these efforts was an enhanced net promoter score (NPS) (a core metric to measure guests’ overall satisfaction and propensity to recommend AirAsia to others), which increased to 60 from 52 in 2020. In addition, in 2021, AirAsia was named the World’s Best Low-Cost Airline for the 12th consecutive year by Skytrax; and the World’s Leading Low-Cost Airline nine years running by World Travel Awards (WTA). WTA also presented AirAsia with the World’s Leading Low-Cost Cabin Crew for the fifth consecutive year. Being guest obsessed, we have also taken every possible step to ensure the safety and reliability of our service. We were therefore very encouraged when AirAsia was once again awarded the top 7/7 rating from experts at airlineratings. com for upholding the highest levels of safety and operational integrity. This follows a similar rating bestowed on the airlines at the height of the pandemic in 2020. M A N A G E M E N T D I S C U S S I O N A N D A N A L Y S I S A N N U A L R E P O R T 2 0 2 1 0 7 5 Business Review
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