Record One Day Sales for AirAsia

The low-cost airline, AirAsia, has reported it sold 279,000 seats in just one single day - Tuesday.

The impressive achievement comes just ahead of AirAsia X’s March 11 inaugural flight to London from Kuala Lumpur.

AirAsia Group CEO Dato’ Sri Tony Fernandes said, “Despite the slowing economy, the demand for air travel from the public is still exceptionally strong. This fact is reflected by the overwhelming sales figures that we received. There are predictions that demand for air travel will be feeble this year, but we remain bullish that it will grow, instead, for us. Our extensive network, which covers over 108 routes, plays a major role in attracting people to fly with us”

“We also have an excellent system in place, though yesterday (Tuesday) we did experience some minimal disruptions due to the high volume of users logged on to our system. It’s clear, however, that a majority of our users were able to get through and make successful bookings. We are thankful for the ‘Open Skies’ booking system provided by Navitaire, which performed almost flawlessly on every occasion and manage to handle the most demanding requirements of our flight booking operations,” Fernandes added.

About 40% of the record sales were derived from AirAsia’s 500,000 F(r)ee Seats Promotion. The promotion offers f(r)ee seats on almost all of AirAsia and AirAsia X’s routes where customers just have to pay fees.

The airline said that the record surge began at midnight Monday, when the free-seats offer was opened, and within just two hours, a remarkable 40,000 bookings had been received.

The free seats are available for bookings made from 10 - 15 February, 2009, for travel from 12 October, 2009, to January 31, 2010.

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