Stockmarket.com.my

Hot off the heels of the recent announcement that national carrier Malaysia Airlines and their purchase of 10 new Boeings, budget carrier Air Asia too make a similar announcement which will surely make everyone sit up and take notice. In fact, Air Asia is upping the ante when they announced that they have ordered 200 A320neos and the news was so positive that its share price immediately went up by 5sen. Delivery of the new fleet will take 10 years and is worth around USD18.2billion.

The delivery of the new order will be around 5 years time (around 2016) and when that happens, analysts believe that they will be used to replace their current fleet. This will ensure that Air Asia will continue to be one of the youngest fleets around. In fact, if they do that, it will apart from ensuring that it is young, maintenance and efficiency could be well maintained and increased respectively. The new A320s have been known to be more fuel efficient (around 15%) and with the new fleet in place, Air Asia could further reduce their operating cost and if that is done, ticket prices could well be reduced as well. After all, that is the name of the game for Air Asia.