AirAsia Flight 8501 went missing on Sunday the 28th December 2014. The airline’s CEO Tony Fernandes continues to encourage and empathise with followers on Twitter.
Fernandes has posted a stream of tweets asking anxious families to remain calm and optimistic while the budget airline faces its biggest challenge ever. “Keeping positive and staying strong,” Fernandes tweeted on Monday the 29th of December, a day after the flight disappeared en route from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore. An international search found no remains of the plane which is assumed to be lying at the bottom of the sea. “To all my staff, Airasia all stars, be strong, continue to be the best. Pray hard,” Fernandes tweeted.
The incident is creepily reminiscent of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 which went missing in March last year and has also not been found yet. This is AirAsia’s first major crash, but Fernandes is keeping a positive image and working hands-on between Surabaya and Jakarta. “I as your group CEO will be there through these hard times,” he tweeted. “We will go through this terrible ordeal together.”
Fernandes, 50, dresses casually and is often seen wearing a red AirAsia baseball cap. He is known as a people’s person and AirAsia’s success is a result of his spirit and perseverance. The CEO once worked as a financial controller for Virgin Records in London and brought British billionaire Richard Branson’s flamboyance and media-savvy to AirAsia. Fernandes is still friends with Branson and in 2013 Branson wore high heels and lipstick and worked a route as a female flight attendant on AirAsia after losing a bet to Fernandes.
Asia was once thought unsuitable for budget aviation but AirAsia is now Southeast Asia’s second-largest carrier according to passenger traffic. Fernandes’ intuition about a need for a budget airline in Asia paid off and in 2013 the airline covered 63.92 billion kilometres, which was more traffic than Japan Airlines, Thai Airways and Malaysia Airlines each in the same year.
Fernandes’ strong social media presence helps support the airline’s image and keep up company morale. He is showing the public and those affected that he is actively taking responsibility for the incident. Fernandes was quick to show a response by tweeting within an hour after reports surfaced about the vanishing aircraft. “Thank you for all your thoughts,” he tweeted. “We must stay strong.”