AirAsia X Berhad (“AAX” or “the Company”), the long-haul, low cost airline affiliate of the AirAsia Group is pleased to announce its operating statistics for the 2nd Quarter 2014 (“2Q14”).

AAX’s planned capacity expansion to achieve and maintain global leadership in the long-haul LCC market continued with a 47% year-on-year growth in Available-Seat-KM (“ASK”) to 6,265 million. This increase arose primarily from capacity introduced in the second-half of 2013 to the Company’s core markets in Australia and North Asia. This new capacity is now reaching its third quarter of maturity. In terms of quarter-on-quarter growth, ASK grew by only 0.7% from the 6,220 million ASKs recorded in 1Q14. The quarterly growth primarily came from the launch of new services to Nagoya, Japan, which commenced on 17 March 2014. The slower quarter-on-quarter growth throughout 2014 is designed to provide the time required for the new capacity in 2013 to mature and reach profitability.

The company recorded passenger traffic in 2Q14, measured in Revenue-Passenger-KM (“RPK”) of 5,036 million, a growth of 44% year-on-year, which resulted in a passenger load factor of 80.4% as compared to 81.8% in the same quarter last year, a decline of 1.4 percentage points. AAX carried 1.02 million passengers in 2Q14, a y-o-y surge of 46% from 0.70 million in 2Q13. This resulted in the Company maintaining its position as the market leader in passengers carried to each of its core markets in Australia and North Asia.

In terms of cargo traffic, AAX’s Freight-Tonne-KM (“FTK”) was 7.2% lower y-o-y, while cargo capacity in Available-Tonne-KM (“ATK”) increased by 27.9% y-o-y. Consequently, cargo load factor fell by 16.7 percentage points to 44.2%.

During the same period of review, the Company’s fleet size expanded from 14 to 23 aircraft. For 2Q14, AAX took delivery of an A330-300 on operating lease, bringing its total number of A330-300s to 20, including two A330-300s leased to Thai AirAsia X and one A330-300 leased to Indonesia AirAsia X. The Company also has two A340-300s and one A330-200 in its fleet, which were actively deployed for wet lease and charter operations during the quarter. AAX has launched 4 new routes year-to-date, namely Nagoya, Xian, Narita and Chongqing expanding its route network to a total of 21 destinations.