News Backgrounder
AirAsia Japan Mark II calls Chubu home
June 1st 2014
Born again low-cost carrier (LCC), AirAsia Japan Mark II, is making its home at Chubu International Airport in Nagoya, after stiff competition from other Japanese airports for the LCC’s business. Read More »
Second tier airports that lost out to Chubu were believed to be Kobe in the Kansai (Osaka) area, Sendai in Japan’s northeast and Ibaraki, 85 kms north of Tokyo.
At press time, few details of the joint venture were known other than at least two other investors, apart from AirAsia, are involved in the LCC. Fernandes said he is talking to “fantastic”, but as yet unannounced investors. The launch flight of AirAsia Mark II is planned by mid next year.
Air Asia Japan Mark I, which opened for business in 2012 and closed 10 months later, , was based at Tokyo’s Narita Airport, where it struggled. After management problems developed between the partners, All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Kuala Lumpur-based AirAsia, the airline was reformed as Vanilla Air and is now wholly-owned by ANA. The Japanese carrier bought out AirAsia’s equity in the LCC.
AsiaAsia Group boss, Tony Fernandes, had made it clear since the collapse of AirAsia Japan that he wanted to return to the Japanese market. In April, he announced AirAsia Japan Mark II would be run by Yoshinori Odagiri, the CEO of AirAsia Mark I, with Osamu Hata, formerly with computer company, Dell in Japan, as CFO.
Centrair-Nagoya fits the bill as an LCC base. It is in the heart of the Nagoya region, known as Chubu, and is the third biggest metropolitan region in Japan. It has a population of nine million and is home to some of Japan’s biggest and most prestigious companies. Surface transport is good by road and rail.
Unlike Narita and Haneda, Chubu’s 24 hour operated slots are unrestricted and landing fees favour LCCs. A bonus is that there are no other LCCs based at Centrair.
One a recent visit to Tokyo, Fernandes referred to AirAsia’s joint venture partnership with ANA as a “nightmare”. He said of AirAsia Japan’s reformed and renamed Vanilla Air: “for ice cream, you need chocolate and raspberry, not only vanilla”.
