AirAsia Group (AirAsia) has officially announced that it will be putting the majority of its carrier fleet into “temporary hibernation” due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic around the world. Some of the suspensions were put into effect as early as 20 March and are expected to last approximately a month into April 2020.
The affected groups include AirAsia Malaysia, AirAsia Philippines, AirAsia Thailand, AirAsia Indonesia, and AirAsia India for all its short-haul flights. As for its medium and long-haul flight group, AirAsia X, the low-cost carrier brand will be suspending its AirAsia X Malaysia flights from 28 March until 31 May.
On another hand, the AirAsia X Thailand group was already being put into hibernation for a three-month period since 16 March. So, in general, you can’t really fly with AirAsia for a few weeks at least.
In light of the flight suspensions, AirAsia also says that several of its management and senior staff will be voluntarily taking a pay cut “ranging from 100% at the very top to 15%“. This was done in order to help the company to sustain itself during the Movement Control Order (MCO) while governments around the world have also close off their borders temporarily.
(Source: AirAsia. Main Image: David McKelvey – used under Creative Commons license.)
