Word: lumpur
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Fernandes, a fast-talking, 40-year-old Malaysian, has become the poster child for the new movement. A 12-year veteran at Warner Music in Asia, Fernandes sold his pricey AOL Time Warner stock options and in 2001 bought into a sleepy two-plane airline in Kuala Lumpur. He now has 18 planes and is looking to buy 80 more over the next eight years. From starting with only 12 flights a day, AirAsia currently has a hundred. On July 1 alone, AirAsia launched its first flight from Kuala Lumpur to Jakarta, added a second to Bangkok and announced...
...cheap fares are luring Asians away from rickety buses, inefficient trains and traffic-choked highways and convincing many to travel more often. Laykha Boonlerd, a 26-year-old bank employee in Kuala Lumpur, could never before afford to fly to Bangkok to see her family and instead made an excruciating 24-hour pilgrimage by bus and train. But with a one-way ticket on AirAsia costing only $26-much less than the price she says she was quoted on national-flag carrier Malaysia Airlines-she decided to fly to Bangkok for the first time in July. "I will travel much...
...slower speed to conserve fuel and reduce wear and tear on tires. Half of AirAsia's tickets are sold over the Internet, eliminating travel-agent fees. Passengers pay for their food and drinks. When a professional aviation construction outfit asked for $20 million to build a hanger at Kuala Lumpur's airport, Fernandes asked the small contractor who built his home to do it instead for $500,000. "There is a lot of excess in the airline industry," he says. "The challenge is to change the mind-set of staff so they eat, sleep and breathe costs...
...advertised price. Fares increase as the plane fills up, especially on very popular routes, so passengers need to buy early to get the dirt-cheap fares. Sam Chan, a Singaporean trader, found this out on a June business trip to Malaysia. He purchased a one-way ticket from Kuala Lumpur to Kota Kinabalu the same day as the flight for more than $80-not much less than the Malaysia Airlines price, he says. And then, he gripes, he had to buy his own food. When a passenger with whom Fernandes is chatting complains that the number of cheap seats should...
...were all building cathedral-like airports; now, they must have their performing-arts palaces. Singapore has its two-year-old Esplanade complex, with a sonic environment created by the legendary American acoustician Russell Johnson, which is regarded by expert listeners as one of the best halls anywhere. In Kuala Lumpur, oil money built a stunning new hall at the base of the Petronas Towers for the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, which celebrates its sixth birthday in August. Futuristic opera houses are going up in Beijing and Guangzhou, challenging Shanghai's Grand Theater. In February, Jakarta opened a 1,500-seat mixed...