Exclusive | AirAsia keen on new airline base in Macau, the first overseas carrier to express interest in disrupting Air Macau’s monopoly
- AirAsia, which has been flying to Macau since 2004, says it may also set up its own service to provide passenger check-in, boarding and baggage handling
- The low-cost carrier is also poised to sell tickets for ferries, trains and other modes of transport along with its flight tickets to take advantage of closer links in the Greater Bay Area
AirAsia, the region’s largest low-cost carrier, may set up a base in Macau to serve Chinese travellers, becoming the first foreign airline to throw its hat into the ring since a January policy that ended Air Macau’s quarter-century monopoly in the gambling hub.
“Entering China could be via Macau,” said AirAsia’s founder and chief executive Tony Fernandes, in an interview with South China Morning Post during Credit Suisse’s Asia Investment Conference in Hong Kong. “We do not have to be in mainland China, but being in Macau is like being in China.”
A base in Macau – the first toehold in China for the Kuala Lumpur-based carrier since an inaugural service in 2004 – would put the airline within easy reach of Chinese travellers, who are expected to make 400 million trips by 2030, more than double the 145 million trips they made in 2017, according to a forecast by online rental platform Cozystay.
It’s also a good staging point for the Greater Bay Area (GBA), a dozen or so cities in the Pearl River Delta in southern China with a combined population of 60 million people and US$1.5 trillion in total economic output. Hong Kong and Macau are both part of the area.
AirAsia, which flies to four destinations within the GBA – Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen and Guangzhou – is open to the possibility of obtaining a certificate to operate an airline in Macau, Fernandes said.