TONY FERNANDES’ PRINCIPLES (Metro TV Oct 27th 2012 with Desi Anwar)

He is a Malaysian and he used to be a musician. But his childhood dream, changed his profession. When he was 6 years old, he was dreaming about having an airline. Now, he is the owner of Air Asia. If you love football, then you must know QPR, a football club sponsored by Air Asia.

His first office was in KL, but now it’s in Jakarta. He founded his office in Jakarta because the growth of Indonesia’s GDP is promising. He loves beer and Blok M is his favorite place to drink. People firstly despised him when they knew that he changed his business from music to airline. But now, you can see that it became the biggest “low-cost” and “no-frills” airline with a big profit. He has a good principle of implementing a business. He makes the cost as low as possible to obtain a reasonable price for everyone.

“Now everyone can fly” is the tagline of Air Asia. It doesn’t lead his company to bankruptcy because with the cheap fare, he can intensify the sales of the ticket that he can make big profit. He said that the bigger the volume of sales, the cheaper price of the ticket people could buy, and  the more profit he would get.

And how can he do that? Apparently, he enhances the efficiency of the flight, such as the efficiency of the pilot, the simplification of the cuisine, the efficiency of the fuel, etc. He said that all Air Asia’s pilots had to consider the shortest way to the destination. To make a low fare, he also eliminated the French cuisine. Yes, he didn’t use a French chef, he just offered the passengers with a traditional food. He created only one class/type of the aircraft, that was economic class. He didn’t create business class or executive class, but only economic class to minimize the overhead expenses.

Talking about the employee, he prefers a young-enthusiastic employee. He prefers an employee who has a good commitment and good loyalty to employee with a high education. For him, education is number two. He has a good sense of problem-solving. He always tell the employees who have a problem, not to hide it. The employees have to tell their own problem and solve the problem straight away. Tony Fernandes doesn’t want his employees to be unhappy. Because for him, employees are the main key to reach success.

Last, Tony Fernandes hoped that he could build a business school in Jakarta. He also wished he could build a hospital which had a total service for the poor people. That’s all what I got by watching the interview between Desi Anwar with Tony Fernandes in Metro TV. Hope it can be a good reference for all readers.