The long-haul budget carrier said in a statement today that its seat capacity surged by over 26 times year-on-year (y-o-y) to 818,422 seats in Q2 2023 from 30,537 seats in Q2 2022.

The increase in seat capacity, said AirAsia X, was due to the incorporation of additional aircraft and the expansion of the airline’s network.

“The company has also demonstrated significant operational improvement across all other key metrics, achieving a passenger load factor (PLF) of 76% in Q2 2023, compared to 29% in Q2 2022,” it said.

AirAsia X reported that its operations have normalised over the past 12 months, with its available seat kilometres (ASK) capacity growing by 25 times y-o-y to 3.51 billion in Q2 2023.

Additionally, it said the number of passengers carried surged by 70 times y-o-y to 621,984 in Q2 2023.

Meanwhile, the group’s associate AirAsia X Thailand saw its number of passengers rise by over 28 times y-o-y to 311,337, while its ASK capacity grew by 44 times y-o-y to 1.8 billion in Q2 2023.

“During the quarter under review, AirAsia X launched flights to Bangkok, Beijing and the Gold Coast, on top of ramping up its frequency to fly daily (seven times weekly) to Sydney, between Sydney and Auckland as well as to Melbourne and Osaka to meet consumer demand.

“Across its network, AirAsia X continues to see stellar performance of over 85% PLF for two of its core routes, namely Tokyo and Taipei,” it said.

On July 20, AirAsia X submitted a request to Bursa Malaysia to be completely uplifted from the Practice Note 17 (PN17) category, on the back of its improved financial situation.

It has also requested the local bourse to exempt it from having to submit a proposed regularisation plan as required under paragraph 8.04(3)(A) of the Main Market listing requirements.

The group entered the PN17 category, which denotes financially-troubled companies, on July 30, 2020.

As at 4.57pm, AirAsia X’s share price was down two sen or 1.1% at RM1.80, giving it a market capitalisation of RM804.73 million.