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 4th Quarter 2014 (“4Q14”) and the Full Financial Year ended 31 December 2014 (“FY2014” or “2014”).

AAX’s passenger size grew another 1.1 million passengers or 34% year-on-year (“y-o-y”) to 4.2 million passengers in FY2014, on the back of stronger branding, enhanced customer experience and larger capacity at KLIA2. Capacity as measured by Available-Seat-KM (“ASK”) grew by 31% y-o-y, with the introduction of new routes- Nagoya, Xian, and Narita in 2014. Load factor for the full year remains healthy at 82.0% despite challenging market conditions.

For 4Q14, AAX’s passenger traffic grew 9% y-o-y, against 8% y-o-y increase in ASK capacity. Consequently, load factor improved by 0.5 percentage points to 81.4%, implying capacity injected during the peak quarter was well absorbed by demand arising from year-end holiday travel.

The Company had during the quarter took delivery of 2 A330-300 on operating lease, bringing its total number of A330-300s to 23, 2 A340-300s (to be returned early second quarter of 2015), and 1 A330-200 (to be returned by first quarter of 2015). Its fleet size has expanded to 26 aircraft from 19, in the same period last year.

On the associates, Thai AirAsia X registered strong load of 84.4% for its 4Q14, with 159,034 passengers carried, showing faster-than-expected pick-up for the well popular routes between Thailand, Japan, and South Korea. Thai AirAsia X launched its inaugural flights to Incheon in July 2014, Osaka, Narita in September 2014, and recently added Sapporo as its 3rd destination in Japan. Indonesia AirAsia X, on the other hand, is set to commence with four times weekly Denpasar – Taipei service in March 2015.