Airasia has signed 50 additional Airbus A321XLR aircraft, placing its first order for the aircraft since the Covid-19 pandemic.
The deal, announced on the sidelines of Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim's visit to France, is valued at over $12.2 billion, said airline founder Tony Fernandez.
The deal includes the existing commitment of the low-cost airline group to 20 A321XLRs, as well as the option to convert up to 20 existing A321Neo orders for long-range variants.
With units in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Cambodia, AirAsia Group has ordered over 300 A321neos. Last February, I converted the 62 A321NEOS on the A321LRS one by one.
Fernandes, CEO of Airasia Parent Capital A, has confirmed that the first A321XLR will be delivered in 2028, but the airline group is in discussions to advance its delivery. The first A321LR will be delivered in 2026, and the airline group will take it four times that year.
The fate of the A330neo is uncertain
Long-range jets allow AirAsia to “fly around the world with a narrow person.” In 2024, AirAsia revealed similar plans to expand its network across Asia-Pacific region to Europe and North America.
“The narrower people clearly give us much less risk in terms of studying new routes, and (it) gives us the opportunity to go to more destinations that we couldn't get to before (on a widebody aircraft),” he adds.
Airasia Sister Unit Airasia X currently operates the A330-300 on medium to long distance routes and orders the A330Neos.
Fernandez on July 4 suggests that AirAsia Group, sold by Capital A to AirAsia X, will become an all-narrow body operator in 10 years.
“My personal preference is to end wide body operations as part of our overall reorganization,” he said, adding that AirAsia is in discussion with Airbus about the fate of the A330Neo order.
Fernandez says the wide body, which consists of nearly 380 seats, is “too big” for AirAsia to expand into a secondary city in Asia.
Many routes in Asia were not possible because the A330 was too big. Looking at Busan and secondary cities in Japan, like Hiroshima and Nagoya, directly on the network from Bali (we can also operate) point-to-point routes.
