Corporate profile

Aircraft is kept flying as much as possible, the first flight starts as early in the morning commercially possible and the final flight typically ends at midnight. A fast turnaround is critical to ensure time spent of the ground is minimal – an airline makes money when the aircraft is flying, not when the aircraft is parked. AirAsia's turnaround time is 25 minutes; compare that against 1 hour for a FSC. On average, AirAsia's utilisation per aircraft is 12 block hours per day, a FSC might do about 8 block hours per day.

The underlying business for a LCC is to get a person from point A to point B. Everything else is considered to be luxury item or "frill", of which can be acquired for a small fee. Among many of the frills that AirAsia has do away are;

• No free food & beverages. Why give away something that you don't appreciate? Guests are most welcome to purchase food & drinks at an affordable price from the cabin crew. 
• Free seating. There is no assigned seating. Guests receive a generic boarding pass and they will have to take any of the available seats.
• Ticketless airlines. Less hassle for the customer, who doesn't have to worry about collecting tickets before travelling, and cost-effective for the airlines (paper, printing, distributing).
• No refund. Airlines waste a lot of money when guests do not show up for a flight due to refunds and rescheduling. Whether a guest shows up or not, the cost of flight to the airline is the same. LCC are unforgiving to no show guests and do not offer refunds for missed flights.  
• No loyalty programme. We believe our customers are loyal to our low fares, so who needs frequent flyer miles programme then.  

Making the process as simple as possible is the key of a successful LCC.

• Single type of aircraft. Pilots, flight attendants, mechanics and operations personnel are specialised in a single type of aircraft, which means, among others, that there is no need for costly re-training of staff, for maintaining a stock with parts for different types of aircraft, for knowledge and skills in order to operate and maintain different types of aircraft with their own characteristics, or for new work requirements.
• Single class seating. There is only one class seating, i.e first class, and guests are free to sit where they choose. Should you want to have the privilege to choose your seats, you can by purchasing Xpress boarding. 
• Standard Operating Procedures. SOPs are important to ensure same level of competence among all the staff. This way we can ensure the homogeneity of service throughout the company.  

• Secondary airports. Low cost carriers mostly fly to and from airports that are not necessarily the busiest, for example, London - Stanstead rather than London - Heathrow. These are often referred to as secondary airports. Operating from so called secondary airports is cheaper than from the bigger major airports and they are also a lot less congested and "turnaround times" for aircraft are a lot shorter. For instance, to minimise fees AirAsia fly into Clark Airbase which is 70km away from Manila as appose to flying into Manila Ninoy Aquino airport.
• Business Lounges. Forget about it. 

Point to point network. LCC shuns the hub-and-spoke system and embraces the simple point-to-point network. Almost all AirAsia flights are short-haul (3 hour flight or less). No arrangements have been made with other airline companies on connecting flights, on possibilities of flight transfers, nor on having the luggage labeled and passed through from one flight to another.

Distribution costs are something that FSC most often ignore. Very often, FSC relies on travel agents and from their posh sales office. Furthermore, FSC always blows the budget by complicating their distribution channels by integrating their systems with multiple Global Distribution Systems. LCC will keep their distribution channel as simple as possible and will cover the whole spectrum of the clientele profile. For example, AirAsia can cater to the most sophisticated European traveler via internet and credit card sales. And at the same time, AirAsia has an established system to sell our tickets to the most remote and technology deprived locations, such as in Myanmar.      

Internet Sales. The bulk of sales (±65%) are done via the airline's website, whereby the fares are paid using a credit card. This is the most cost effective distribution channel. 

• Sales office. AirAsia only has a few sales offices. We only establish a call centre if we are confident the sales derived from the centre will be worth it. Furthermore, we are not fixated with having our sales office in the posh side of town.    
• Travel agents. LCC avoids reliance for sales via travel agent as much as possible. This means that the airlines do not pay any commission to a travel agent, which would otherwise have been reflected in the fares. Also, as they do not use travel agents, they do not use, nor participate in the world wide reservation systems and thus save costs, which again are reflected in their pricing.
• Call centres. Ticket sales can be done via telephonically; this is a simple and cost effective method.