Entrepreneur of Airasia - Tony Fernandes

            1.1       Background of entrepreneur   

Tan Sri Anthony Francis "Tony" Fernandes, CBE who born on 30 April 1964 is a Malaysian entrepreneur. He is the founder of Tune Air Sdn. Bhd, who introduced the first budget no-frills airline, AirAsia, to Malaysians with the tagline "Now everyone can fly". He managed to turn AirAsia into a failing government-linked commercial airline, into a highly successful budget airline public-listed company. He has since founded the Tune Group of companies. Besides that, he proposes the idea of open skies agreements with neighbouring Thailand, Indonesia, and Singapore. As a result, these nations have granted landing rights to AirAsia and other discount carriers.

            1.2       Business development of Airasia

Fernandes' biggest achievement has been to turn the AirAsia airline into an international carrier. Before the creation of AirAsia, countries in the region did not have open-skies agreements. In Thailand and Indonesia, AirAsia holds a minority stake in the respective local companies. Thai AirAsia, a joint venture with Shin Corporation, Thailand’s largest telecommunication conglomerate, took to the skies in Feb 2004 and has to date carried over 1 million passengers in its first year of operations. PT Awair, re-launched as a low fare airline on 8 December 2004 and subsequently renamed Indonesia AirAsia, presently serves 5 domestic destinations in Indonesia.

            1.3       Reason to choose Tony Fernandes as entrepreneur

“In AirAsia we consider ourselves basically a dream factory…We deliberately decided that we wanted a company where people can pursue their passion and we wanted to make use of all the talent that we have in-house.” Tony Fernandes tells people to dream the impossible.  He uses unique culture and management style to transform AirAsia into one of the fastest-growing and most successful low fare airlines in the world. He also encourages people to pursue their passion to create an environment where people can learn, grow and do what turns them on. Besides that, he breaks down hierarchy to encourage people to speak up, relax formality and break down the walls in an open floor plan.