AirAsia and MAHB on the warpath

SEPANG: AirAsia is on the warpath with the Malaysian airport autho­rity, declaring that it will rebrand the KLIA2 terminal as LCCT2.

The next time you fly AirAsia to the airport, you may find your pilot welcoming you to “LCCT2”.

Your ticket, too, may read LCCT2 and so will AirAsia’s website.

AirAsia had originally operated out of the Low-Cost Carrier Termi­nal.

AirAsia chief executive officer Aireen Omar said the group would embark on a rebranding campaign to rename everything it could to LCCT2, from promotional materials to its website, tickets and even taxi services.

She knew this would be in de­­fiance of the landlord, Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB), which has shot down the plan last week.

The issues with MAHB came to a boil at a press conference yesterday morning.

“I’m going to call it LCCT2 from now on. We run 97% of flights in LCCT2. If you go and look at the board, you will see it is all AirAsia flights, so why should they (MAHB) be denying this?

“If we were to move to a new airport, what would LCCT2 be? Their retailers would be crying for help and there would be no passengers.

“It would be empty. It will be a ghost town,” she said.

“I think, in a way, this is to put to MAHB to stop denying that we don’t matter, that we’re not relevant. Because they seem to take their time in addressing our requests and requirements in our operations.”

She said the name change was expected to happen soon and she believed there would be no confusion among passengers.

“We know the passengers see LCCT2 as what it was in LCCT, except it’s a bigger airport now. I don’t think they will be confused. I think we will do it in a way that is not confusing to them,” she said.

AirAsia was forced to relocate its operations to KLIA2 from LCCT in 2014, despite their claims that the new building was rife with security and construction problems.

Since then, Aireen claimed the airline’s growth had been stunted as the airport’s design and check-in system was not allowing it to accommodate larger volumes of passengers.

She also described the new airport as “beyond repair” with ponding, sinkholes and cracks costing the airline “hundreds of millions” of ringgit to upkeep operations.

Malaysia also lost its position as the world’s largest low-cost carrier hub to Bangkok’s Don Muaeng airport.

“That should be us. We were the world’s largest LCC. Unfortunately, because we are not working well together and there seems to be some resistance on their side.

“We have tried so hard to work together to resolve our issues with MAHB and it hasn’t seemed to work.

“It is so hard to have meetings with them, so hard to resolve things,” she added.

At peak periods, Aireen said passenger lines stretched “into the mall” due to MAHB’s “less superior” check-in system which disallows the automated method the airline employed in LCCT.

AirAsia operates 220 daily flights around Kuala Lumpur and receives 37,000 passengers every day at KLIA2.

© Provided by The Star Online

AirAsia Group chief executive officer Tan Sri Tony Fernandes announced plans to rebrand KLIA2 as LCCT2 last week, saying it would reinforce Kuala Lumpur’s position as the leading low-cost gateway.

In response, MAHB said KLIA2 was not an independent airport or a low-cost hub but KL International Airport’s second terminal.