The AirAsia Story: How a Young Airline Made It Possible for Everyone to Fly and Became a Runaway Success Practically Overnight by Sen Ze & Jayne Ng

This book is about the story between AirAsia with the CEO Tony Fernandes. It also reveals Air Asia’s challenges, hurdles, bumps and how it overcomes all the problems.   

AirAsia is a Malaysian low-cost airline headquartered in Kuala Lumpur. It has been named as the world’s best low-cost airline and a pioneer of low-cost travel in Asia - Wikipedia

Through this book, I had surprise to know that…

1. Tony Fernandes was a Vice President of Times Warner Music Southeast Asia (Musicman) before he joined for AirAsia.

2. Tune Air, a company Tony and his investors set up, took over AirAsia for RM 1, together with its 2 Boeing 737-300s, a tiny route network and nearly RM40 million in debts.

“Believe the unbelievable, dream the impossible and don’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” was how Tony described AirAsia’s survival in a talk he delivered on business insights at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA) in August 2005.

Tony once joked at an interview that people only recognized him because of the cap he was wearing, adding that, “…if I take off this cap, you will see me as just another Indian guy!”

“There is a fine line between managing the ego and having no ego. You’re got to have an ego. If you don’t have ego, you won’t be successful, but [you need to know how to manage] that ego.” He advises.

Previously, eight out of ten people on the street could not afford to travel overseas due to the high cost of air transportation, but that does not mean they never wished to travel. With AirAsia and the other low-cost carriers on the scene today, the sky is suddenly packed with tourists.