If you live in Southeast Asia, chances are you likely have heard this tagline "Now Everyone Can Fly" at least once, if not more times, in your life. That's the tagline of the famous low-cost airline: AirAsia.
The man behind the tagline and the success of the red and white fleets is none other than Tony Fernandes. Born in Kuala Lumpur on April 30, 1964, as Anthony Francis Fernandes, the Malaysian entrepreneur has inspired many people in his effort to provide an affordable flight for everyone, starting from Malaysia and now throughout Southeast Asia and beyond.
If you look at his achievements, you'll find impressive portfolios from the likes of Virgin Communications, Warner Music and Queens Park Ranger, the U.K. football club. According to the Forbes Malaysia’s Richest List 2018, The AirAsia CEO was ranked 30th with a fortune reaching USD 745 million.
After graduating from the London School of Economics with a degree in accounting, Fernandes spent several years at Virgin Communications in London, eventually becoming a financial controller. He soon jumped over to Warner Music Group and served as the Southeast Asian regional vice-president for nine years.
"I was in the music business, I kind of got tired of people telling me what to do from somewhere in New York, and I was against the merger of AOL and Time Warner. So I just quit," Fernandes told CNBC (03/18), adding that he didn't want to take someone's salary and be a hypocrite, while he complained about it.
His childhood dream was to own an airline. Lo and behold, Fernandes was able to achieve this dream on December 2, 2001, right after the 9/11 tragedy in New York City. He and Kamarudin Bin Meranun bought AirAsia, at that time a government-linked airline, for one ringgit, but with a debt worth more than US$11 million (MYR 40 million) and two Boeing 737-300 jet aircraft to its name.
However, through his innovative practices of the budget no-frills airline, the company managed to break even the debt in one year. Afterwards, profit, success and fame quickly follow the now world's best and leading low-cost carrier.
The success of AirAsia budget airlines under Fernandes' hand should also be attributed to how he build the company culture. Openness and transparency is the keyword. He emphasizes the equality and importance of every and each one who works in AirAsia.
As Tony Fernandes said, "employees come number one, customers come number two. If you have a happy workforce they’ll look after your customers anyway."
The key to his brilliant marketing and strategy to be able to make "everyone can fly" is to win the people first, and by people, he prioritized his own employees first. This shows when he tacked on the previous statement with, "you can have all the money you want in the world, and you can have all the brilliant ideas but if you don’t have the people, forget it."
In just sixteen years, AirAsia has flown over 500 million guests to more than 130 destinations. With 60 percent of the guests were first-time flyers, as Tony noted on his speech when the airline hit half a million guests mark on May 2018, it's safe to say that AirAsia is still keeping its tagline in the heart.
Although with many new destinations being opened and connected by the airline, they might want to change the tagline to "Now Everyone Can Fly Everywhere" in the future.