On February 22, 2024, AirAsia announced its plans to become the world’s first “low-cost network carrier.” As part of the ambitious plan, the airline aims to operate transpacific flights out of Japan.
At the announcement, made during the visit of the Chief Executive Officer of the Commercial Aircraft business, Christian Scherer, to AirAsia’s headquarters, Tony Fernandes, the CEO of Capital A (the umbrella company for the AirAsia group), said: “With our wide-body Airbus A330 fleet including the introduction of A330neo, we are also looking to expand our medium to long-haul network to the European continent, to cities like London, Paris, Amsterdam, Bratislava, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Africa (Cairo, Nairobi, Cape Town), East Coast North America (New York, Miami, Toronto) via Europe and West Coast North America (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vancouver) via Japan.”
In addition to showing transpacific flights to the west coast of the US and Canada, the map outlining AirAsia’s network expansion also includes flights from South East Asia to three Japanese airports it does not serve yet: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Sendai.
Should AirAsia’s plan materialize and the airline launch flights from Japan to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Vancouver, it will be the first time for the airline to fly between Japan and North America. It will not be its first time to fly from Japan to the United States, though. AirAsia X operated flights between Kuala Lumpur and Honolulu via Osaka Kansai (with fifth freedom rights on the Japan – US portion) between the end of June 2017 and the start of the pandemic.
