In an interesting twist, Capital A CEO Tony Fernandes revealed the ‘Ask Bo’ virtual assistant is named after Bo Lingam, the CEO of AirAsia Aviation Group.

“Our guests have spoken, and we are listening and learning. We felt their frustration towards our first AI chatbot, AVA, which was always a work in progress. We recognise she (AVA) fell short of people’s expectations, and we want to do better.

“Over the last eight months, the customer experience team has zeroed in on what our guests need and want, what their top complaints are. And today we are happy to introduce ‘Ask Bo’, named after our Bo Lingam,” he said after the launch of Ask Bo here today.

As part of efforts to be more open and transparent, Fernandes said Capital A would reveal live information on on-time performance and baggage handling information on its website and Super App.

AirAsia Aviation Group chief airport and customer experience officer Kesavan Sivanandam revealed many new features were being added to Ask Bo.

This includes providing live updates on a customer’s flight status as well as changes and boarding information in several languages, including English, Chinese, Malay, Bahasa Indonesia, Thai, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese.

“Ask Bo will send push notifications on any last-minute changes, and give baggage information and report real-time automatic updates of departure timings into the electronic boarding pass,” he said in a Bernama report.

Kesavan added guests would be able to talk live to human agents during the Ask Bo interaction by March this year.

“Our guests will have more autonomy where they will be able to change flights, request refunds, choose service recovery options,” he said.

As at December 2022, AirAsia has refunded 98% of the total claims made since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, and US$2.1 billion (RM9.03 billion) has been paid out to guests in various forms, including cash, credit account, travel voucher and AG Credit.