Air Asia Indonesia denies low cost to compromise with safety

26 November 2009

JAKARTA-- Air Asia Indonesia, a prominent low cost air transporter, on Thursday denied accusation that it compromises cheap fare it charges with passenger safety.

"We want to erase a stigma that as a low cost carrier, we compromise our passenger safety with our cheap tariff," said Moeharjanto Sasono, the company's Safett Director told a dialog titled "Communication Strategy in Indonesian Transportation Safety."

He said that his company regularly checks its aircraft's condition, replacing improper spare parts and conduct training for pilots for every six months and flight attendants for every year.

"It's true that the efforts are very expensive but we have to do that. We don't want to sacrifice safety just for profit," said Moeharjanto.

He said that the company maximizes efficiency to press its tariff.

"We only sell seats, a thing that passengers need most. We sell ticket via Internet so we don't have to pay to travel agents. We also maximize time after a plane landed. We only need 25 minutes to check and replace things. That's why we can sell ticket cheaper," he said.

Widijastoro, the company's Marketing Director, said that the company always tries to increase its profile as the safe low cost carrier.

"We are in coordination with the Manchester United, a leading football club, in which we painted some players in our plane's body," he said.

According to Widi, maybe people saw it as merely the company's action as the club's sponsor.

But, actually it's a kind of hidden publication as the club surely does not want to damage its reputation by letting its players painted in a carrier's plane body with bad image. I want people know that the club has audited our track record. That's one of our efforts to erase the stigma," said Widi.

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