Air Asia CEO Admits He Cried After December 2014 Plane Crash
Malaysian entrepreneur Tony Fernandes is the founder of Tune Air, the company that started Air Asia, a popular budget airline that flies all across Asia. Fernandes started Air Asia with the tag line that said ‘Now everyone can fly’ and that captured the company’s vision.
Fernandes who is rated by Forbes as the 28th richest man in Malaysia did a phenomenal job in leading the airline and making it profitable. The biggest setback that Fernandes faced with the airline till date has been the Air Asia QZ8501 flight crash that happened on 28th December 2014. The plan was flying from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore when it crashed and killed all 142 passengers on board.
Air Asia has done reasonably well since the crash and Fernandes has led from the front. He recently opened up during an interview and shared insights on how he processed the unfortunate QZ8501 flight crash.
In a statement, Fernandes said “I cried alone. I’ve never said that. I think when you’re with your people, you need to be as strong as possible. The first step was, ‘Do I turn up or do I not go?’, and the first decision was ‘No, you shouldn’t go. This is the Indonesian airline’, But the airline is so closely linked with me, it would have been wrong not to have gone and my staff needed me, my people needed me and most importantly, it had to be seen by the relatives that the very top was there.”