Budget carrier AirAsia said on Monday that it will introduce a fuel surcharge on its flights for the first time from tomorrow as part of efforts to combat spiraling fuel costs.
"Fuel is the single largest cost component for the company; the fuel surcharge will allow the company to alleviate the escalating fuel costs," the carrier said in an announcement to the stock exchange.
AirAsia said the surcharge would be 5.0 ringgit per sector (US$1.32) for flights within Malaysia, 10.0 ringgit per sector for flights to East Malaysia and 25.0 ringgit per sector to Thailand, Indonesia, Macau and the Philippines.
"The fuel surcharge is expected to contribute positively to AirAsia's consolidated earnings for the financial year ending 30 June 2006," it said.
"There is an urgent need for the government to resolve the calls for domestic air-services rationalization," AirAsia's chief executive officer Tony Fernandes was quoted as saying by the official Bernama news agency.
"The move would mutually benefit both [Malaysia Airlines] and AirAsia as a consolidation can help airlines curb high operational costs due to spikes in fuel prices," added Fernandes, who recently said both airlines were in negotiations over domestic routes.
AirAsia's announcement follows a similar move by Malaysia Airlines, which last week said it will raise its fuel surcharge for international travel from Friday.
Fernandes said AirAsia would monitor the situation and "consider reducing or scrapping the fee if fuel prices returned to normalized levels."
AirAsia, which launched as a budget carrier in December 2001 with just two aircraft, is now Southeast Asia's biggest low-cost carrier in terms of fleet size.
Meanwhile, AirAsia said yesterday it has resumed talks with Hong Kong on launching flights there, saying the territory's officials seem open to the possibility.
"Yes, some of our officials have been there for talks," a spokeswoman for the Malaysian-based airline said on condition of anonymity.
Her comments confirm a report in Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper on Monday that AirAsia and Hong Kong Airport Authority officials have resumed negotiations on the issue, about a year after they ended abruptly.
Neither side explained why the talks broke down, but there has been speculation that the high costs of using Hong Kong's airport were the main factor.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Wednesday said that a new chip manufacturing technology called “A16” is to enter production in the second half of 2026, setting up a showdown with longtime rival Intel over who can make the fastest chips. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract manufacturer of advanced computing chips and a key supplier to Nvidia and Apple, announced the news at a conference in Santa Clara, California, where TSMC executives said that makers of artificial intelligence (AI) chips will likely be the first adopters of the technology rather than a smartphone maker. Analysts said that the technologies announced on
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
CALL FOR DIALOGUE: The president-elect urged Beijing to engage with Taiwan’s ‘democratically elected and legitimate government’ to promote peace President-elect William Lai (賴清德) yesterday named the new heads of security and cross-strait affairs to take office after his inauguration on May 20, including National Security Council (NSC) Secretary-General Wellington Koo (顧立雄) to be the new defense minister and former Taichung mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) as minister of foreign affairs. While Koo is to head the Ministry of National Defense and presidential aide Lin is to take over as minister of foreign affairs, Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) would be retained as the nation’s intelligence chief, continuing to serve as director-general of the National Security Bureau, Lai told a news conference in Taipei. Koo,
MANAGING DIFFERENCES: In a meeting days after the US president signed a massive foreign aid bill, Antony Blinken raised concerns with the Chinese president about Taiwan US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and senior Chinese officials, stressing the importance of “responsibly managing” the differences between the US and China as the two sides butt heads over a number of contentious bilateral, regional and global issues, including Taiwan and the South China Sea. Talks between the two sides have increased over the past few months, even as differences have grown. Blinken said he raised concerns with Xi about Taiwan and the South China Sea, along with China’s support for Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, as well as other issues