The Finance Ministry is not sure why the government has yet to give approval to Air Asia to fly to Sydney despite the carrier getting the green light from the Australian government.
In his reply to Rembau MP Khairy Jamaluddin in Parliament today, Deputy Minister Awang Adek Husin said the government was still deliberating on the matter.
This is typical of an answer in Parliament, alwys evasive. Either the question is wrongly put or answered by the wrong person. Both ways, the people are not getting the right answer.
The industry understands that Malaysia has adpoted an open sky policy. This means that anyone can fly into Malaysia. So what is our business to stop our carriers going to other peoples' country. It is purely a commercial effort.
Earlier, Khairy also asked about the government’s principle in awarding airline routes, whether it was to support the carrier that could bring tourism dollar or to protect national carrier, Malaysia Airlines.
Awang said the government was fair to both carriers but he acknowledged that AirAsia had partly helped boost tourism in Malaysia through its massive promotion such as selling cheap air tickets.
This is an understatement. We know that Air Asia has worked harder than the Ministry of Tourism to bring in the millions of tourist to Malaysia without spending a single sen of the government's money.
“Our tourist arrivals soared last year to 24.6 million from the previous 23.6 million in 2009. Therefore our revenue from tourism soared to RM56.5 billion in 2010 from the RM53.4 billion recorded partly due to Air Asia’s contribution,” he said.
“However, we are offering several incentives to Air Asia by reducing passenger service charge from RM51 to RM25. We are also building a new low- cost carrier terminal (LCCT 2) in Sepang for the carrier at a cost of RM2 billion,” he added.
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