AirAsia bags Skytrax World Airline Awards for eighth year

- AFP

KUALA LUMPUR: AirAsia has been named the World's Best Low-Cost Airline and Asia's Best Low-Cost Airline for the eighth year running.

It won the 2016 Skytrax World Airline Awards, dubbed the "Oscars of the Aviation Industry", at the Farnborough International Airshow in the United Kingdom.

The Skytrax awards are the global benchmark of airline excellence with over 19 million customers from 104 nationalities surveyed worldwide, measuring standards across 41 key performance indicators of an airline's frontline products and services.

AirAsia Bhd group chief executive officer Tan Sri Tony Fernandes as well well its CEO Aireen Omar received the coveted awards on Tuesday, along with CEOs from AirAsia Group affiliates.

In a statement, AirAsia said the low-cost airline also flew in an Airbus A320 with a special Skytrax livery to commemorate its eighth straight win in the World's Best Low-Cost Airline category.

Fernandes thanked AirAsia's employees for doing a great job, enabling the company to retain the World's Best Low-Cost Airline title for the eight consecutive year.

"But we have a long way to go and we can be better... we want to improve our customer service, including improving how we communicate with our customers," he said live on YouTube after receiving the award.

He said moving forward, the airline would work hard and come up with a lot more technologies to make flying with AirAsia a lot more easier.

AirAsia is Asia's largest low-cost carrier by passengers carried and by jet fleet.

It comprises short-haul affiliates AirAsia Bhd, Indonesia AirAsia, Thai AirAsia, Philippines AirAsia and AirAsia India, as well as long-haul affiliates AirAsia X, Thai AirAsia X and Indonesia AirAsia X. - Bernama