Opinion | Why budget airline meals don’t work on the ground: Air Asia’s Asean menu at Santan in Malaysia is overpriced and fails to impress

Low-cost carrier’s foray into fast food, offering generic Southeast Asian fare that costs more than local dishes, seems like a flight of fancy

The badly cooked and overpriced meals in cardboard boxes will have trouble competing against Malaysia’s 167,000 other food and drink outlets

Reading Time:3 minutes

Air Asia’s foray into fast food, serving airline meals in cardboard boxes, seems like a bad idea. Santan's Uncle Chin's chicken rice combo was salty and greasy.

Published: 4:00pm, 4 Jan 2020Updated: 4:00pm, 4 Jan 2020

The Mid Valley Megamall in Kuala Lumpur has more than 100 restaurants, cafes, and snack stands to meet every kind of craving. As of this month, that list includes a novel and seemingly quixotic option: Santan, a cafe that serves aeroplane food in cardboard boxes.

As restaurant concepts go, “quick aeroplane food” isn’t an obvious winner. But Santan is owned and operated by AirAsia Group, the region’s most successful budget airline. With profits declining in the industry, the company is looking to diversify – it wants to reduce flying from making up 80 per cent of its business to about 40 per cent by 2025 – and earthbound airline food is central to its vision. Over the next few years, it plans to open more than 100 new Santans.

“A year ago, when I first conjured the idea of turning … our in-flight food choices into a fast-food restaurant, everyone thought I was crazy,” says Tony Fernandes, the company’s chief executive officer. “Just as they thought 18 years ago, when I said I was starting an airline. Look how that turned out.”

That may seem like an inapt comparison. But the idea of creating “the first Asean fast food franchise”, as Fernandes puts it, isn’t inherently crazy. Southeast Asia’s expanding middle class is increasingly keen on upgraded dining options. And Western fast-food outlets, such as McDonald’s and KFC, have been proliferating. In Malaysia, Yum! Brands, owner of KFC and Pizza Hut, has opened more than 1,000 outlets, making it the country’s – and the region’s – most successful food service operator.

Tony Fernandes is chief executive officer of AirAsia Group. Photo: Antony Dickson

So the market is potentially vast. The problem for AirAsia is that winning customers in Southeast Asia’s cutthroat restaurant industry will be much harder than getting passengers onto budget aircraft.

For one thing, Fernandes may be misreading the competition. Those American fast-food outlets make up a mere fraction of the 167,000 food and drink businesses in Malaysia, the vast majority of which serve local fare.