Thai airways wants consortium to compete with AirAsia

Thai Airways International’s chief executive Piyasvasti Amranand has recently said he believes that Thai-owned airline carriers would benefit greatly if they combined forces and took on their foreign rival, AirAsia. AirAsia is a large budget provider in the airline field and it happens to enjoy a rapidly increasing base in Thailand.

The ever-increasing expansion of AirAsia has obviously not been well-received by most of the Thai carriers, especially since the Malaysian budget carrier continues its successful streak, adding ever more routes and chipping away concurrently at traffic figures from other airlines.

Many of AirAsia’s recent expansion plans have apparently taken away a huge amount of customers that would have flown Thai based airlines in other circumstances.

Tassapon Bijleveld, the chief executive of Thai AirAsia, responded by making his confusion and surprise obvious at the recent disclosure. The perceived discrimination against foreign owned carriers raised many eyebrows. Thai AirAsia is said to be a sister concern of AirAsia which currently is touted to be one of Southeast Asia’s largest airline group. AirAsia was original started from Malaysia.

However, reservations have been expressed by other regional airlines too. Many airline carriers in SouthEast Asia have expressed concern over the rapid expansion plans of AirAsia. The airline has seen an upward growth graph ever since it was founded in 2002, starting off with just two planes.

AirAsia now has a fleet of 80 aircrafts and caters to around 60 destinations. The airline is reported to serve at least 75 million people around the world.