“I don’t know where this came out from but obviously, (we do) revalue and evaluate all our operations at any one moment. We will have to wait and see, but there is nothing planned at the moment (suspensions) … it’s a rumour,” he said today.

It was reported yesterday that AirAsia Japan was suspending all flights from Oct 1-24, pressured by weaker than expected demand with three domestic routes, connecting the airline’s base in Chubu to Sapporo, Sendai and Fukuoka, to be suspended.

Fernandes said the airline would continue to focus on Asean and had no plans to close its Japan operations. “Not at the moment,” he said. “We never know what is going to happen (in the future),” he added.

On domestic operations, Fernandes said he was optimistic of growth as airlines would be able to recover quickly. The load factor for the domestic market currently stood at 70%, he said.

On the possibility of another retrenchment, he said: “I can’t say no to anything … I’m going to work hard and hope we will get the support so that we don’t have to carry out retrenchments. That is the last thing I want to do,” he said.