Buying flight tickets online? Air Asia, definitely. Now everyone can fly. Wow. COVID-19 has hit them hard. Now everyone cannot fly. Okay, not everyone but you get the idea.
I am a supporter of both Malaysia Airlines and Air Asia. They are our airlines which are serving the world. They bring millions of tourists into Malaysia. Now, both are not doing well. I really hope they hang on because when rain goes away, bright sun will be back.
Article in themalaysianreserve.com AirAsia Bhd and AirAsia X Bhd have confirmed that they will be retrenching 10% of their 24,000 employees a week ago. AirAsia Group chief executive Tan Sri Tony Fernandes said the move was because the aviation sector is facing difficulty in recovering in the near future.
He said, “AirAsia is all about its people. Whatever people want to say, we built a great company because of great people, 24,000 great people, and we lost some though it was through no fault of theirs. So my responsibility is to try to get the airline back (on its feet) and provide them other jobs.” Please do read the news in full here: Article in themalaysianreserve.com
No one could anticipate what has happened. Now everyone cannot fly. I was just speaking to a friend the other day and we realised we have not met for over 6 months. WOW. COVID-19 has really impacted lives. It has changed how we interact, how we buy things and even locked most of us within the country we were in when COVID-19 arrived. I think I am fortunate to be in Malaysia even if we are currently facing 3rd wave. Let’s just keep those numbers low.
Airlines have not been so lucky. Without people flying, they have no ticket sales. Pilots and stewardess and even all other administration and technical staffs may not have that much to do. The company is meanwhile ‘burning cash’ because they needed to pay the staffs salary every month even when they have no sales coming in due to this circumstance.
Some airlines were reported to sell some fried stuffs and said to be earning some money but it’s really just too little. Some started the flight to nowhere and some say they will open a restaurant serving the food on the airline. Seriously… all these will not amount to much. More costs would need to be cut. More funds would need to be found because the airlines needed the funds to keep going. This has got nothing to do with whether they were successfully restructuring or not. This is just, ‘now everyone cannot fly.’
Some updates on other airlines. I do hope all would survive and come back again. That’s when I could travel again too.
Singapore Airline raised S$11 billion (RM33.56 billion) to weather the COVID-19 storm.
Thai Airways open flight simulators to public and launches restaurant serving plane food.
President Trump asks for ANOTHER US$25 billion (RM103.47 billion) bailout for US airlines
Over 40 airlines have failed within 2020 thus far
Airlines will burn US$77 billion (RM318.7 billion) in cash only within H2 2020 alone…
When the sky is busy again, these airlines will be back much stronger because many have fallen. Thus, supply of air tickets have already shrunk. We just need demand to restart the engine so that everyone can fly again. For now, probably till the time when vaccines are fully approved and totally ready to be shipped out from manufacturing plants, I guess airlines will just have to find ways, somehow to hold on… as we are currently at this situation: Now everyone cannot fly
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