A New Chapter for AirAsia

Issue Overview

A defining characteristic of the AirAsia empire has always been its corporate complexity. Now it stands to simplify by bringing AirAsia and AirAsia X together as one, while leaving aside most of the group’s laundry list of non-core business units. The new “AirAsia Group” will hold great promise as it emerges from bankruptcy-like restructurings, into an Asian airline market still ripe for rapid growth. But the group seems ever still burdened by its old sins of ambition, once again flirting with quixotic network aims. As our feature story discusses below, AirAsia is well-positioned to be its region’s Ryanair. But it wants to be Ryanair and Emirates both.