Its CEO Riad Asmat said Mavcom was also doing more harm than good to the Malaysian aviation sector by trying to micro-manage it.
“It is holding the industry back with slow approvals and high charges while other countries invest heavily in increased air traffic connectivity, to the detriment of the Malaysian tourism sector and the economy,” he said in a statement.
Adding that AirAsia had seen a 3% decline in tourist arrivals to 25.95 million in 2017, Riad said Mavcom’s rejection of route applications would only further compound the issue and hamper the tourism sector and economy.
He said local airlines were already lagging behind other Asean carriers in terms of total weekly seats deployed for Asian destinations.
“According to the tourism ministry, Thai carriers have deployed 893,166 weekly seats while Singapore carriers have deployed 661,863 compared with 590,422 by Malaysian carriers as of December 2017.
“Mavcom blocking growth in this manner will only serve to benefit other regional airlines who are allowed to grow without undue restrictions by their own civil aviation authorities,” he said.
Pointing out that Mavcom was not an airline, the AirAsia CEO said the aviation commission should leave the running of the airline business to actual airlines like AirAsia who understand the market.
“We operate more than 320 routes, one-third of which are unique, to over 130 destinations across Asia Pacific, the Middle East and the US,” he added.
Yesterday, Mavcom defended its decision to reject AirAsia’s application to add more flights on two routes, Kota Kinabalu-Sandakan and Kuala Lumpur-Haikou, on the basis of route overcapacity.