AAX’s passengers up 8% in Q4

PETALING JAYA: AirAsia X Bhd (AAX) carried 1.61 million passengers in the fourth quarter ended Dec 31, 2019 (Q419), an increase of 8% year-on-year (yoy) from the same period last year.

“While seat capacity was up by 4% yoy to 1.99 million during the quarter, available seats per kilometre (ASK) capacity increased marginally by 1% to 9.21 billion on the back of a shorter stage length following the network realignment exercise,“ AAX announced its operating statistics for the quarter and full year today.

AAX Malaysia charted a healthy passenger load factor (PLF) of 81% in Q419, which was 3 percentage points (ppts) higher than the PLF recorded during the same period last year.

During the quarter, flight frequencies to Bali, Taipei, Seoul, Perth, Sydney and the Gold Coast were increased, especially in December, to cater for high demand from the year-end peak travel season.

AAX Malaysia launched two new routes in November 2019; Kuala Lumpur-Singapore was launched with 14 times weekly frequency while Kuala Lumpur-Tokyo (Narita) commenced on top of existing Kuala Lumpur-Tokyo (Haneda) services. These new routes will increase the aircraft utilisation rate. The fleet size of AAX Malaysia stands at 24 A330s as at the end of Dec 31, 2019.

In Q419, AAX Thailand’s total number of passengers carried surged by 40% yoy to 744,414 passengers, as ASK capacity grew by 43% yoy to 4,080 million due to the addition of new routes in the first and second quarters of 2019 and expansion of its fleet size throughout the year of 2019.

Its PLF softened by 1 ppt yoy to 83% during the quarter, on the back of aggressive fleet and network expansion. The fleet size of AAX Thailand increased to 13 A330s as at the end of December 2019 following the delivery of 1 A330-300 aircraft on direct third-party lease in December 2019.

On a full-year basis, AAX Malaysia charted a total number of 6.07 million passengers carried, 2% lower yoy in-line with the drop in seat and ASK capacity at 2% and 3% yoy respectively. This came on the back of the network optimisation exercise and the subsequent route realignment.

In 2019, AAX Malaysia introduced five new routes from Kuala Lumpur; Fukuoka, Lanzhou, Taipei-Osaka, Tokyo (Narita) and Singapore.

Meanwhile, AAX Thailand carried a total of 2.60 million passengers in 2019, surging by 29% yoy. ASK capacity was up by 41% to 14,470 million, driven by fleet expansion that led to the new routes launched from Bangkok in 2019; Brisbane, Shenyang, Tianjin, and Fukuoka. AAX Thailand added four A330s throughout 2019.

The total fleet size for AAX group is 39 Airbus A330s as at end December 2019, including seven aircraft on direct third-party lease to AAX Thailand and two aircraft leased to AAX Indonesia.

source https://www.thesundaily.my/business/aax-s-passengers-up-8-in-q4-BM1943838