AirAsia plans to create local businesses, jobs
THE holding firm behind AirAsia Philippines is looking at bringing its logistics, engineering, and ride-hailing businesses to the Philippines to create more jobs for Filipinos, its top official said.
Capital A Berhad Chief Executive Officer Anthony Francis Fernandes said in a statement on Monday that the company will be putting more investments in the Philippines.
“We have a great logistics business coming — Teleport Philippines, which we think will be great for e-commerce providers in the Philippines to sell their goods all over,” Mr. Fernandes said.
“We want to build an engineering company here, on top of Lufthansa Technik’s. We would like to bring Asia Digital Engineering (ADE) which is really a fantastic engineering company,” he added.
ADE is the engineering arm of Capital A, which provides heavy maintenance, repair, and overhaul services for the group’s commercial aircraft.
Capital A is also planning some major changes across its Philippine operations as part of its post-pandemic recovery strategy such as increasing its fleet to sustain route expansion both domestically and internationally.
“Leisure, migration workforce, and small and medium enterprises travel currently comprise pent-up demand for air travel,” Mr. Fernandes said, adding that 80% of AirAsia’s traffic in Southeast Asia consists of shorter trips and low-cost travel.
“With this, we’d like to further connect the Philippines to other ASEAN destinations,” he said.
The company will be making recruitment a priority in the next few months. It anticipates hiring an additional 1,000 employees to support AirAsia Philippines’ expansion in the next three years on top of the expected 6,000 jobs that will be created by the introduction of Capital A’s ride-hailing business in the Philippines.
“My priorities were to survive, to bring back people, and recruit more people. Our biggest asset actually is people. People are smart here, people are hard-working, and they have a wonderful personality. So for us, we will grow all four lines of Capital A in the Philippines,” Mr. Fernandes said. — Justine Irish DP. Tabile
