Maan paints Philippine skies red

The AirAsia Group is Asia’s largest low-fare airline and a pioneer of low cost travel in Asia. Founded in 1993, the heavily indebted airline was bought by former Time Warner executive Tony Fernandes’ company Tune Air Sales Bhd. for the token sum of one ringgit which was less than $1 at that time.

Today the group operates scheduled domestic and international flights to over 400 destinations spanning 25 countries. AirAsia Philippines commenced its first flight on March 2012 and its main hub is the Clark International Airport. From there it flies domestically to Boracay, Palawan and Davao. Its first international flight was to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and by next month Hongkong and Macau.

Maan Hontiveros was managing director of Warner Music Philippines before she and her associates, Antonio Cojuangco and Mike Romero, started AirAsia Philippines. Here is a two-part interview of her take on the Philippine travel and tourism industry and on her vision for AirAsia. If at times her words evoke passion and “service to the people,” it is because she was an activist and a visionary idealist going back to her high school and college days in St. Scholastica’s where she was editor-in-chief of The Scholastican. In 1986, she received the Outstanding Achievement Medal for public service of the highest order for her participation in the People Power Revolution in 1986.

Here is the first part of the interview:

Question: What made you decide to go into the airline business?

Answer: Tony Fernandes who was my associate at Warner Music (he was MD of Malaysia, I was MD of the Philippines) decided to leave Warner Music and set up Tune Air. He called me and told me to start saving money because we would set up a joint-venture airline after he establishes one in Malaysia. At that time, I asked him what he knew about the airline business and he said that if we could successfully sell artists and compact discs, we certainly could sell airline seats especially if we could give low fares to a huge market of people who couldn’t afford to fly. Tony proceeded to establish AirAsia in Malaysia and then he went on to set up a Joint Venture (JV) in Thailand and after that in Indonesia.

Four years after he first broached the idea of a JV in the Philippines to me, he asked me to help him negotiate rights to fly into Clark from Kuala Lumpur and Kota Kinabalu. This enabled me to look at his operations and start the search for JV partners. I witnessed the growth of low-cost travel in Malaysia due largely to Tony’s AirAsia. It blew my mind! I watched the KL Low Cost Terminal’s phenomenal growth as AirAsia transferred its operation there. In no time at all, it became much busier than the KL International Airport! I also had the opportunity to interview Filipino passengers on those Clark-KL flights and was inspired by the families of OFW (overseas Filipino worker) workers who suddenly could travel abroad to visit their husbands or wives instead of just waiting for their loved ones’ annual leave. Low-cost travel on AirAsia was reuniting families! How cool is that?! My friends and I began traveling more frequently -- even attending birthday dinners of friends in KL or Bangkok and spend weekends in Kota Kinabalu simply because it became affordable to travel on AirAsia.

Q: What was the hardest thing you had to learn?

A: I had to pour through the Philippine Civil Aviation Regulations -- thousands of pages of them, and learn a whole new vocabulary for a whole new industry. But that was the easy part. The most difficult part was securing the Air Operator’s Certificate (AOC) and completing the AOC Certification procedure. I assembled my dream team comprised of a mix of analytical and creative minds -- people from within and outside the aviation industry who could work both individually and as a team. They all had to exhibit the five basic values which I will discuss later.

They had to be passionate about traveling and enthusiastic and fully committed to their work. They had to believe in the value of the skill they were contributing to the team. They had to have that CAN DO attitude and needed to exhibit trustworthiness. We recruited our flight deck and cabin crew and had them trained at the AirAsia Academy in Kuala Lumpur. They underwent very rigid training standards that served us exceedingly well as we hurdled the mandatory procedures, flight demonstrations and checks conducted by the CAAP (Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines). In all these, I had to lead, motivate, and push my team to their optimum performance level. Perhaps the hardest skill I had to hone was patience and keeping cool under pressure. I think I am a much better person for the learning!

Q: Are you positioning AirAsia Philippines more as an international airline or as a domestic airline?

A: I believe that we can serve Filipinos and the country best by providing connectivity between the Philippines and our ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian) and Asian neighbors. Our international arrivals in 2011 reached only 3.5 million in 2010. Compare that to the 24.5 million visitors to Malaysia (population 28 million), Thailand’s 15.9 million, Singapore’s 11 million, Indonesia’s 7 million and Vietnam’s 5 million and you can see the need for us to draw in tourists from our neighbors! We were so ecstatic when out 2011 figure reached the 4 million mark. Isn’t that pathetic? My priority then was to provide routes that connect Clark to ASEAN plus Japan, Korea and China. I estimate that 60-70% of our seat capacity will be for Regional International destinations.

Q: What competitive advantage does AirAsia Philippines have over other local airlines?

A: We have the youngest fleet in the country, thanks to our brand-new Airbus A-320s. We have partnered with the leading low-cost airline in Asia and through this joint venture partnership, we can leverage on a very strong brand, image and reputation. AirAsia Malaysia and their joint venture airlines in Thailand and Indonesia combined have carried 140 million passengers over the last 10 years. They were voted the World’s Best Low Cost Airline for four consecutive years since 2008. As a new airline, we have had the advantage of studying the market and learning from our competitor’s weaknesses.

Consumers complain about deceptive promotions and low cost fare claims. We started the all-in-fares practice in March when we launched our first ad on our 20,000 free seats promotion by clearly stipulating that the zero fare required guests to pay P275 for the fuel surcharge, processing fee, aviation security and VAT (value added tax). In June, the CAB (Civil Aeronautics Board) had mandated ALL domestic airlines to publish all-in fares! We are proud that we did this voluntarily as part of our commitment to transparency and not because of a regulatory imposition.

We have five fundamental values that guide us in how we treat our employees and our guests. These five values are: safety, passion, caring, fun and integrity. These provide a frame of reference for the AirAsia experience and a corporate culture in which we live and by which we strive to deliver peak performance.

Our cost-optimization philosophy is in no way at the expense of safety. We adopt ZERO tolerance to unsafe practices and strive for zero accidents through proper training, work practices, risk management and adherence to safety regulations at all times, under a Just Safety Culture.

Sourced: bworldonline