OAG Argues AirAsia Has Grown Too Large for Asia to Let It Fail

An OAG analysis traces AirAsia's path from a near-collapsed start-up to a carrier so large that the Asian market could not quickly replace its capacity. The airline launched in 1998 with two ageing Boeing 737s and about 40 million Malaysian ringgit of debt, before Tune Air bought it for one ringgit in 2001. Scheduled seats grew from 1.19 million in 2002 to a pre-pandemic peak of 77.99 million in 2019, fell to 9.09 million in 2021 and are scheduled at 63.91 million in 2026, down from 69.86 million in 2025. Across the 2026 group, AirAsia Malaysia accounts for 57.5% of flights and Thai AirAsia 36.7%, with Thai AirAsia alone operating over 120,000 flights and twice the capacity of Thai Airways. The analysis flags currency exposure as the central vulnerability, noting that when many costs are in US dollars and most revenues are in weakening Asian currencies, costs can spiral out of control. Its conclusion is that 64 million seats could not be quickly replaced if AirAsia ceased operations.