AirAsia wins Market Leadership Award

AirAsia won the Market Leadership Award at the recent 2005 Airline Achievement Awards by Air Transport World Magazine. The awards ceremony held in Washington, DC, is one of the most coveted and prestigious annual events to recognize excellence in the airline industry. Other notable winners this year were Air France – KLM Group (ATW Airline of The Year), and Virgin Atlantic Airways (Passenger Service Award).

AirAsia’s triumph at the awards has placed it amongst the crème de la crème of the aviation industry. It joins an alumnus of luminaries such as Virgin (1998), Ryan Air (2000), and Jet Blue (2002), whom were all previous winners of the ATW Market Leadership Award. 

As the only other Asian based airline to be recognized in the history of the Awards, Jet Airways being the other, AirAsia has come a long way from its humble beginnings 3 years ago as a start up low cost carrier in Malaysia operating with just 2 Boeing 737-300s.

Today, AirAsia commands a fleet of 28 Boeing 737-300s, and operates over 100 daily flights from its hubs in Kuala Lumpur, Johor Bahru, Bangkok, and Jakarta. In its bid to offer low fares to the people and to integrate ASEAN, AirAsia spread its wings to neighbouring Thailand and Indonesia through the strategic formation of Thai AirAsia (Thailand), and AWAIR (Indonesia), both of which are joint ventures with local entities.

ATW Editorial Director J.A. Donoghue,  said, “It gives me great pleasure to present this year’s Market Leadership Award to AirAsia. In just three years, AirAsia has created an entire new market of travelers, and revolutionized the air travel industry across the region. Most importantly, AirAsia has shown that the Asia Pacific region is ripe for low fare competition.”

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