Former MP questions huge AirAsia debt

Wee Choo Keong wants to know why MAHB and the Transport Minister have not taken action on AirAsia.

KUALA LUMPUR: Former Wangsa Maju MP Wee Choo Keong has questioned why Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai and Malaysia Airport Holdings Bhd (MAHB) have allowed AirAsia to chalk up a massive debt in excess of RM50 million in Passengers Service Charge (PSC) fees, also called airport taxes.

The PSC is paid by departing passengers, and is collected by airlines upon ticket purchase to be then paid to MAHB on completion of the flight.

In a post on his website today, Wee tacitly accused MAHB and Liow of condoning AirAsia’s huge outstanding debt through their lack of action.

He pointed out that this was not the first time that AirAsia has owed PSC fees, having in 2010 owed MAHB about RM120 million for more than five years. AirAsia was forced to pay the outstanding tax after the matter was raised in Parliament.

Instead of an interest (having been imposed) for the outstanding airport tax debt, Wee wrote, AirAsia was granted a huge discount of about 25% by the Government.

“By right the 25% discount should have been passed on to the passengers who (had) paid for the Airport Tax. In this case, AirAsia benefited from the said Airport Tax debt!” said Wee in his post.

He went on to list other faults, saying that in November 2011, the Ministry of Transport had confirmed that AirAsia and AirAsia X had collected from no-show passengers amounts totalling to RM6.5 million and RM498,000 respectively.

The said sums have not yet been handed over to MAHB or returned to the no-show passengers.

“Yours truly believes that up to this date the said PSC had (sic) not been refunded to the no-show passengers and/or paid to MAHB for safe-keeping,” said Wee.

“Despite having kept the said PSC, in December 2014 AirAsia had posted losses of RM429 million and AirAsia X RM650 million.”

In 2012, AirAsia owed a small PSC debt to the Indonesian airport authorities, and was not permitted to take its aircraft off the runway until the debt had been fully settled.