“Exciting time for guests, Malaysians. More jobs and economic growth,” he tweeted following his meeting today with Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng and Transport Minister Anthony Loke.
Fernandes also alluded to his long-standing feud with the airport manager, saying he hoped the “war is finally over and we both win together”.
“MAHB and AirAsia. And of course the main winner, Malaysians.”
His tweets came a day after AirAsia said it had contributed significantly to MAHB’s revenue growth in response to MAHB’s claims that the low-cost carrier had benefited the most from its incentive programmes to the tune of RM376 million to date.
Fernandes had last year expressed regret that the group could not work with MAHB to realise klia2’s potential as the low-cost carrier hub of Asia.
He cited the different priorities set by AirAsia and MAHB as the fundamental reason for tension between the two, and even accused the latter of not understanding the low-cost airline business.
The AirAsia-MAHB’s latest spat revolved around the relocation of AirAsia’s operations to Kota Kinabalu International Airport’s Terminal 1 (T1) since December 2015 from Terminal 2.
MAHB was reported to have said in a statement that “at no point in time did MAHB force AirAsia Group to move to T1”.
It was reported yesterday that Fernandes had met with Sabah Chief Minister Shafie Apdal to discuss the budget carrier’s plan to operate the Kota Kinabalu International Airport (KKIA) Terminal 2 as an independent, low-cost terminal.
Fernandes: Incentives given to all airlines, not just AirAsia