KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 29): AirAsia X Bhd saw an 8% year-on-year (y-o-y) increase in its passenger volume during the fourth quarter ended Dec 31, 2019 (4QFY19).

In a statement today, the long-haul budget carrier said it transported 1.61 million passengers in 4QFY19, with seat capacity rising 4% y-o-y to 1.99 million seats during the quarter.

Meanwhile, available seats per kilometre (ASK) capacity inched up by 1% to 9,211 million, on the back of shorter stage length, following its network realignment exercise.

AirAsia X Malaysia recorded a passenger load factor (PLF) of 81% during 4QFY19, an increase of 3 percentage points (ppts) y-o-y from the corresponding quarter last year.

The carrier said flight frequencies to Bali, Taipei, Seoul, Perth, Sydney and the Gold Coast were increased during the quarter under review, especially in December, to cater for high demand from the year-end peak travel season. AirAsia X Malaysia had launched two new routes in November 2019, it added.

These routes were the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore Route which has a frequency of 14 times weekly, and the Kuala Lumpur-Tokyo (Narita) route which is additional to the existing Kuala Lumpur-Tokyo (Haneda) route.

As such, the carrier opined these new routes will increase its aircraft utilisation rate.

As of Dec 31, 2019,  AirAsia X Malaysia’s fleet stands at 24 Airbus A330s.

For AirAsia X Thailand, 4QFY19 saw passenger numbers swell by 40% y-o-y to 744,414, as ASK for the division grew 43% y-o-y to 4,080 million, following additions of new routes during 1QFY19 and 2QFY19, as well as the expansion of its fleet size throughout FY19.

However, AirAsia X Thailand’s PLF softened by 1ppt y-o-y to 83%, on account of the aggressive fleet and network expansion. AirAsia X Thailand’s fleet increased to 13 A330s, following delivery of an A330-300 aeroplane on a direct-third party lease in December 2019.

For the entirety of FY19, AirAsia X Malaysia saw the number of passengers it transported drop by 2% y-o-y to 6.07 million passengers, which was inline with the 2% y-o-y drop in seat and 3% y-o-y drop in ASK capacity.

“This came on the back of the network optimisation exercise and the subsequent route realignment,” the group explained.

2019 saw AirAsia X Malaysia introduce five new routes from Kuala Lumpur to Fukuoka, Lanzhou, Taipei-Osaka, Tokyo (Narita) and Singapore.

AirAsia X Thailand’s passenger volume surged by 29% y-o-y to 2.60 million passengers in FY19, with ASK growing by 41% to 14,470 million, on the back of fleet expansion that lead to new routes being launched from Bangkok.

These new routes from Bangkok were to Brisbane, Shenyang, Tianjin and Fukuoka.

In total, the Thai division of AirAsia X added four A330 aircraft throughout 2019.

On a group level, as of Dec 31, 2019, AirAsia X had 39 Airbus A330s. This is inclusive of the seven aircraft on direct third-party lease to AirAsia X Thailand and two aircraft leased to AirAsia X Indonesia.

As of 10:50am, shares of AirAsia X were trading 3.45% or half a sen lower at 14 sen apiece, giving it a market capitalisation of RM580.74 million.