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AirAsia, Southeast Asia's largest low-cost carrier, is turning Phuket into its second hub in Thailand, a move that will support its plan to open a series of new routes directly linking the island resort with other Asian cities.
Phuket is looming large on AirAsia's radar screen, along with Medan in Indonesia's North Sumatra, Bandung in West Java and Penang in Malaysia where it will set up bases as part of its aggressive expansion.
The Phuket base, scheduled to be up and running in the second half of this year, will serve as a springboard for the carrier to embark on new flights from the island to cities in China and Hong Kong initially.
"Having a hub in Phuket means you can operate more new routes using Phuket as a base, and bring in more traffic from overseas," Kathleen Tan, AirAsia's regional head of commercial flights, said in an interview.
The plan requires its Thai sister airline, Thai AirAsia, to hire ground staff, engineers for jet maintenance and initially to keep at least one aircraft on standby, she explained.
Phuket is one of AirAsia's top ports of call,in terms of traffic volume, and the no-frills carrier intends to further exploit the potential of the budget-conscious leisure travel segment.
Passenger volume through Phuket International Airport was almost stagnant last year, up 0.46% year-on-year, due largely to Thailand's political turmoil including the seizure of Bangkok's two airports.
However, international passenger last year rose 10% to 2.4 million, underlining Phuket's international popularity, while domestic numbers shrank 5.48% to 3.32 million, according to figures from Airports of Thailand Plc.
The AirAsia group has been speeding up the development of sub-hubs in the region as it is strengthening its network that now stretches across the 10 Asean countries to complement its original main hubs: Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Jakarta.
It operates 114 routes covering 64 destinations, all within only seven years of operation.
Last year it opened a facility in Bali in Indonesia as a new base, in addition to Kota Kinabalu and Johor Bahru, both in Malaysia.
AirAsia is reviewing the possibilities of new services to Chinese cities including Chengdu and those lying in central region of the mainland.
But adding new routes is not the key to AirAsia's strategy, at least this year, when raising frequencies on existing routes is a higher priority, said Ms Tan.
The airline group hopes for 30% capacity growth this year.
In spite of a general slowdown in global air travel demand triggered by the economic crisis, the carrier has no plans to delay taking delivery of new aircraft from Airbus this year.
"For the last few months, demand has been good for us," Ms Tan said.
But it is monitoring traffic demand trends to see whether there is a need to defer receiving new jetliners over the next few years.
Its current aircraft orders include 175 narrow-body A320-200s and 25 wide-body
