KUALA LUMPUR: AirAsia has dismissed Malaysian Aviation Commission (Mavcom) police report against its chief executive officer Tony Fernandes over claims that the airline was pressured to cancel flights during the 14th General Election (GE14) period.
The airline said Tony’s claim was backed by evidence, including communications with Mavcom executive chairperson Abdullah Ahmad.
"AirAsia strongly refutes the police report lodged by Mavcom against AirAsia Group CEO Fernandes.
"We would like to emphasise that the video released by Fernandes on May 13 is fully supported by evidence and facts, including direct communication between AirAsia Malaysia CEO Riad Asmat and Mavcom executive chairperson Abdullah.
"We will divulge the evidence and facts to the appropriate authorities at the right time," the airline said in a statement yesterday.
AirAsia said it would also cooperate with the police and take all actions to protect the interests of the airline as well as its CEO.
Earlier, Mavcom refuted Tony’s claims that the airline was pressured to cancel an additional 120 flight during the GE14 period.
Mavcom said it viewed the claims seriously and had lodged a police report against Tony over the allegation.
Mavcom said it had in fact approved all 66 additional flights which Air Asia had applied for on Apr 23 itself.
“We view Tony Fernandes’ accusation against Mavcom of asking AirAsia to cancel 120 extra flights which would have carried 26,000 people on top of it normal flights as baseless and malicious.
“The Commission has never issued such directive to any airlines including AirAsia to reduce or cancel any flights where regulatory requirements had been met,” it said in a statement referring to a video of Tony justifying why he endorsed Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s administration just before the recent general election.
In the statement, Mavcom also explained that initially, AirAsia had on April 13 and 18, requested for a total of 54 additional flights, which it approved.
On Apr 20, the low-cost airline requested for an additional 86 flights.
“However, on Apr 23 at 8.17am, the commission received a revised flight application for 66 additional flights for the period of May 6 to May 13, 2018, from AirAsia, superseding its earlier applications.
“In its e-mail submission, AirAsia specified that its previous applications should be disregarded. The commission took note of this revision and subsequently approved this revised request on the same day,” the statement read.
Mavcom said that it considers these claims to be “serious allegations” and reassured an immediate investigation is underway.
It was reported that Tony claimed that he was under a lot of pressure before GE14 from the Barisan Nasional-led government.
He had uploaded a video on his Facebook page, which saw him attributing the low-cost carrier’s success to the BN government.
This angered Netizens and Malaysians at large, where calls to boycott AirAsia were issued.
On May 13, Tony released another video to apologise.