MELBOURNE (Nov 3): Low-cost medium-haul airline AirAsia X Bhd (AAX) aims to be profitable by the end of 2023, banking on huge demand for air travel and its attractive low fares.

AAX chief executive officer Benyamin Ismail said the airline had benefitted from the group’s restructuring, enabling its cost structure to come down quite a bit, thus providing room for it to set lower fares.

“The positive side is that demand in the market is high, but supply is very low. [The market’s] airfares are fairly high [at the moment], so we can benefit from it for the meantime.

“There's a big differential between our fares and other full-service carriers. I think we will be attracting people in the middle-income [group,] who are not able to afford to pay high fares,” he told reporters here on Thursday (Nov 3).

Meanwhile, newly-appointed chairman Tunku Datuk Mahmood Fawzy said AAX had put key performance indicators and targets in place as guidance for the management in achieving the turnaround mission.

As for cost-effectiveness, Benyamin noted that AAX aims to be a company that runs its business at the utmost efficient level, delivering the right number of flight frequencies that is sufficient to serve all networks under its umbrella.

He also said AAX would welcome back 150 staff — pilots and cabin crew members who underwent furlough during the pandemic — into the company by December in order to strengthen the existing workforce.

Updating on AAX’s plan to expand its service to Istanbul, Turkey, Benyamin said the new network would likely materialise in the next six months, while for London, the airline still needs to iron out a few things before it can start the service.