For those who do not know about this fact, do you believe Tony Fernandes bought AirAsia for only RM1?
How did Fernandes buy AirAsia at a cheap price? If you want to know, you have to read the article to the end.
Before that, let's dive into a brief history of who Tony Fernandes is.
Fernandes was born on April 30, 1964 in Kuala Lumpur. His father is from India while his mother is from Melaka.
During his youth, Fernandes often followed his mother to sell Tupperware items at Tupperware parties.
As a child, Fernandes once told his father that he wanted to own an airline but his father said that if Fernandes had been a doorman at the Hilton Hotel, his father would have been proud.
He attended primary school at The Alice Smith School in Kuala Lumpur. At the age of 12, Fernandes continued his education at the Epsom College boarding school in England from 1976 to 1983.
Fernandes graduated with a degree in accounting from the London School of Economics.
While in England, he often had problems returning to Malaysia due to the high cost of airfare.
He is also confident that not many Malaysians can afford to fly because of the high cost.
Since then, Fernandes has developed a desire to set up a low-cost airline for Malaysians.
After graduating from LSE, Fernandes worked for Virgin Airlines as an auditor in 1987 and later worked as a financial controller at Virgin Records from 1987 until 1989.
At the age of 27, Fernandes returned home and became the youngest managing director at Warner Music (Malaysia).
Then, from 1999 to 2001, he was appointed Vice President of the Southeast Asian Region for Warner Music.
When Time Warner Inc. merged with America Online, Fernandes decided to quit his job and set up an airline company.
When he wanted to set up AirAsia, Fernandes was brought to meet the former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad with the help of the former Secretary General of the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, Datuk Pahamin A. Rejab in October 2001.
However, Tun Dr. Mahathir at the time told Fernandes that the government would not issue a license for the airline anymore and if he wanted to, Fernandes would have to buy an existing airline in the country.
At that time, there were only two potential airlines namely Rainbow Water and AirAsia operated by DRB Hicom.
Fernandes also took over AirAsia for RM1 but the company at that time had a debt of RM40 million apart from only owning two aircraft and 254 employees.
The aviation industry at the time was severely affected by the terrorist incident at the World Trade Center (WTC) in the United States on September 11, 2001.
Following the incident, people refused to board the plane for fear that a similar incident would happen to themselves.
Fernandes, however, dared and took the risk of buying AirAsia so that he was called crazy because doing business that would openly cause him to suffer losses.
Even AirAsia at that time was expected to go bankrupt at any time.
In addition, the rental value of airplanes also decreased by 40% and many experienced workers quit their jobs.
But Fernandes saw the situation as an opportunity and appointed those who were laid off at other airlines to work with him.
As a result, Fernandes managed to prove people's perception of him wrong when after a year, AirAsia was able to settle all its debts.
Fernandes' move to restructure AirAsia's organization with a new image and concept enables the company to generate profits in a short period of time.
In November 2004, AirAsia's issued share price (IPO) received a surge in demand of 130%.
Fernandes was inspired to start the concept of low cost flights through RyanAir, an Irish airline that carries out such a concept.
50% of low-cost airline customers are the first to board a plane.
Before AirAsia introduced the concept of cheap addition, Fernandes found that only 6% of the Malaysian population had ever boarded a plane.
Although the establishment of this company was very risky at first, now AirAsia has boosted Malaysia's name globally.
In fact, AirAsia has been named the world's best low cost airline 9 times in a row.
Today, AirAsia has 260 aircraft and has over 100 million customers worldwide.
