Malaysia’s Capital A said Monday it plans to invest in logistics and aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul services in the Philippines to create more jobs as part of AirAsia Philippines’s short and long-term plans.
“I am excited to put in more investments in the Philippines. We have a great logistics business coming—Teleport Philippines, which we think will be great for e-commerce providers in the Philippines to sell their goods all over,” Capital A chief executive Tan Sir Tony Fernandes said.
“We want to build an engineering company here, on top of Lufthansa Technik’s. We would like to bring ADE, which is really a fantastic engineering company,” he said.
Asia Digital Engineering is the engineering arm of Capital A, providing heavy MRO services for the group’s commercial aircraft.
As part of its post-pandemic recovery strategy, the airline is planning some major changes across its Philippine operations. In addition to a stronger focus on enabling local e-commerce and setting up engineering operations in the Philippines, the airline also plans to increase its Philippine fleet to sustain route expansion both domestically and internationally.
“Leisure, migration workforce and SME travel currently comprise pent-up demand for air travel. Eighty percent of AirAsia’s Southeast Asia traffic consists of shorter trips and low-cost travel. With this, we’d like to further connect the Philippines to other ASEAN destinations,” Fernandes said.
He said to set the pace for major developments, recruitment will also be a priority in the next few months. Fernandes said he is anticipating the hiring of an additional 1,000 employees to support the AirAsia Philippines’ expansion in the next three years on top of the 6,000 jobs expected to benefit from the introduction of Capital A’s ride-hailing business in the Philippines.
“My priorities were to survive, to bring back people and recruit more people. Our biggest asset actually is people. People are smart here, people are hard-working, and they have a wonderful personality. So for us, we will grow all four lines of Capital A in the Philippines,” he said.
AIrAsia opened its doors last week for cabin crew hopefuls. Another leg of the cabin crew recruitment will happen on June 26, 2023 to complete the need for additional cabin crew for the third quarter of 2023.