KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 5): There will be no merger of AirAsia's aviation arm businesses into one new entity, but instead all aviation operations will be injected under one existing structure, said Capital A Bhd chief executive officer Tan Sri Tony Fernandes.

He said this implies that four airlines under Capital A, namely AirAsia Malaysia, AirAsia Thailand, AirAsia Philippines, and AirAsia Indonesia, and AirAsia X Bhd (which operates AAX Malaysia and AAX Thailand) will be operating separately under AirAsia Aviation Group (AAG).

"We are just injecting AirAsia airlines into AAX’s listing status...there is no merger. AAX will be renamed as AAG, and there will be six airlines under it.

"As one company, we can take out a lot of costs, but there will be separate operations by each individual airline," he told the media after launching the AirAsia SUPER+ Unlimited subscription package here on Monday (Dec 5).

Citing an example, Fernandes said the new separate operations will be of the same structure as International Airlines Group (IAG), which owns British Airways, Iberia Airlines and Aer Lingus.

He noted that once all the airlines are under one entity, each one will maintain its respective operation of short-haul and medium-haul flight services, with the company’s total of 225 aircraft comprising the Airbus A320 and A321 models.

“Going forward, [we see that our] major planes will be the A321 for both airlines. We want to grow again. Now we have an order book of 326 A321 aircraft,” he added.

Meanwhile, during the launch of SUPER+, Fernandes said the airline is hopeful to open all its networks by the second quarter of next year, pending the reopening of a few other destinations currently still under Covid-19 restriction measures.

“We could not control when [China] will open, but we are hoping it opens sometime next year. The only [networks] that are not opening now are Macau and China. The rest are all open,” he said.