KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 6): AirAsia Bhd said it has yet to hear from Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB), following its demand for RM409 million in compensation for losses and damages arising from the budget airline’s operations at klia2.

“We haven’t heard anything from MAHB as yet, so we’ll just have to see how it goes. We are quite firm with our standing, because this is not something we have thought of overnight. We have been working on this for the longest time, for more than a year or so,” said AirAsia's chief executive officer Aireen Omar.

She added that issues related to its operation in klia2 have been brought up since the low cost carrier first moved to the new airport.

She cited the recent aircraft rollback incident on July 17, which led to the aircraft having to be grounded for 8 hours during peak period, as an example.

She said such incidents have been happening too frequently, while MAHB’s (fundamental: 0.8; valuation: 1.4) response is to just continuously resurface the new low cost carrier terminal’s apron, following these issues.

“We can’t have that because the soil will continue to settle over the next seven years, I was told. They can’t keep using the same solution all the time, as it is disrupting our operations. We cannot continue like this. They should take our lawsuit seriously, because we’re serious about it,” said Aireen.

She said the ongoing issues at the airport will impact the company’s performance in the current financial year ending Dec 31, 2015, as they have resulted in higher operating costs for AirAsia.

The difficulties they caused are primarily delays and higher fuel consumption, as its aircrafts have to taxi longer before reaching the runway, due to klia2’s deficiencies.

“Not only that, we’re operating in an airport that is still under construction. Every day, bays and taxiways are being resurfaced. It’s quite frustrating for our staff members,” she said.

AirAsia fell 3 sen or 2.2% to RM1.34 today, bringing its market capitalisation to RM3.73 billion. Year-to-date, the stock has fallen 51.3% from Jan 2 (RM2.75).

(Note: The Edge Research's fundamental score reflects a company’s profitability and balance sheet strength, calculated based on historical numbers. The valuation score determines if a stock is attractively valued or not, also based on historical numbers. A score of 3 suggests strong fundamentals and attractive valuations.)