Tell us a bit more about your long-haul plan. Obviously, it started as a short-haul product. We will keep short-haul very much as it is. Malaysia has not got a lot of connectivity. The country has been shrinking in the past few years and we are surrounded by two big hubs - Singapore and Bangkok. I believe I have a product that has never been done before that could work, we don’t know yet. But I think if I can get fares as low as $150-$200, then we can stimulate a new market. But we have to be radical and get costs to a stage never before reached. The beauty of this long-haul product is that from London you come to Kuala Lumpur from where Air Asia can fly you around Asia. So it is speculative? But, nothing ventured, nothing gained. So we will give it a shot. What markets are you looking at? China and probably somewhere in Britain. Stansted probably. You said the challenge will be to keep costs low. How are you going to achieve this objective? Well, we are going to work the plane harder. We won’t have long turnarounds. People say, well, if you turn a plane around in 25 minutes, you won’t save much time, but, really, long-haul aircraft turnaround time is about six hours. So if you turn around quickly, you could probably squeeze in another flight. We won’t be a slave to schedules; we will come in and go out whenever. So we may arrive at a destination at 2 AM. We will have high-density seating that’s still comfortable. We will sell food. We will really max out anciliary income. We will sell everything and take out a lot of the cost. A point-to-point market really could save us a lot of money. Most airlines have connecting flights and hubbing flights. We will take all that out. We can save a lot doing that. But there are risks, right? One risk is it’s a product that people won’t take to because they want the comfort; they want the food. But I am pretty confident that I am reaching a new market that wants to fly. We want to offer a guy in Mumbai who’s never dreamt about it before the chance to come to Malaysia or the Gulf. He holidays in Goa or somewhere and suddenly he’s on the beaches of Bali. I don’t think he cares whether he gets food or not. So I am really appealing to a new market. But no airline has really attempted this before. No, no airline has. People say, What makes you think you will succeed when no one else has? First, it has succeeded. The pioneer of this was Freddy Laker and he made it work. It is just that the big airlines got together and put him out of business. Secondly, someone has to go out and do it. That’s what innovation is all about. I am not saying it will work, but if you don’t try you don’t know and I think no one has tried. People have given lots of reasons of why it won’t work. Many people said iPods wouldn’t work. But Steve Jobs made it work. So I think innovation and technology and moving with the times is what it is all about. There is no guarantee of success but innovation is about someone trying. How is your existing business doing? Well, we are having our best year ever. For five years we had to go through a lot of pain and strife, you know, getting it right, dealing with national carriers, dealing with protective governments, dealing with airports that really are asleep. There weren’t low-cost carriers before; now everyone is doing it, everyone wants to start one. So we have got to the stage now where we have 51 planes and we will carry 18 million passengers next year, which is more than Emirates or Cathay or SIA carries. It is an accepted model now. Airports and governments are hungry for it. Before, I was a pariah; now people are calling me to come to their country. So we are doing well; we have grown and it has become more complicated but we have been able to reduce our costs. I think our model will change dramatically with the introduction of our A320. We have a really good product now with our brand-new Airbus and by June all our aircraft in Kuala Lumpur will be Airbus. We are now going to 70 destinations and are high frequency on a lot of them. Without sounding over-confident, we are looking at the best we have ever been, but if there is one thing the airline business has taught me it is that you don’t know what is around the corner. I never heard of a tsunami before. I thought it was a Japanese disease. We have had bird flu, we have had earthquakes, we have had it all. So it is an industry that keeps you on your toes. But it’s fun, because people generally want to travel and, generally, when you are traveling you are happy because you are going somewhere. So I enjoy the people and the challenges and I enjoy proving people wrong. But I have a lot of gray hair and it has come from the airline business [laughs]. What inspired you to launch Air Asia? I always loved planes. I was in the music business for 12 years. I got tired of piracy. I got tired of putting so much effort into a record and then seeing it copied all over the world. I got tired of Time Warner, all their mergers and I was really against the AOL merger. So I just quit. I was very impulsive. I just resigned and I saw EasyJet on TV and I had never heard of low-cost carriers. I always wanted to own an airline, you know, one of those things you say when you are young but which you probably don’t believe you are going to do. And I went to Luton airport and I was blown away by EasyJet, so I came by the next day and I filmed everything. I thought since everyone had stolen my music, I would copy everything on EasyJet [laughs], though we follow the RyanAir model more than the EasyJet model. And I just decided to go ahead. I didn’t have much money. I sold off my stock options. You know, I started this airline with $200,000. That’s all I had. I roped in three friends and we put in, collectively, about $350,000. We bought an existing airline which had an existing infrastructure. We took on $20 million in debt and that was the greatest thing that could have happened to us. Because we could not have afforded to do it any other way and we just had to make it work from day one. So we started with two planes, 200,000 passengers and, five years later, we are where we are. One of the big issues here this time in Davos is climate change and airlines play a very big role in that. It’s a quandary for me because I feel very strongly about it, yet I am one of the contributors to it. It’s a tough one to call because, on one side, if I made a sacrifice of not growing, then my people wouldn’t grow. And what have Americans done to cut their global emissions? I am saying that if there was a global initiative for everyone to cut their emissions, then I would definitely be part of it. I think if Air Asia stops flying, it’s a small element, but if the Americans cut their consumption by just 5 percent, that would be a lot. So I do think we need to put more in sustainable income. I have no objections to taxing airlines, provided it goes into sustainable renewable energy and the money doesn’t just get wasted. And it should be across the board. There should be a tax across everything and we should be looking at renewable clean energy. But to those who would penalize Air Asia, saying we cannot expand because we are contributing to global warming, I say go to hell. You guys go first. I mean, you can’t even get Kyoto ratified. What can airlines as an industry do? Better air traffic control for a start. If you are wasting time circling the sky, flying longer when you can fly shorter because of restricted air space. Air traffic controls can save a fortune. Airports could be better managed and I think more pressure should be put on the engine manufacturers to bring out more fuel efficient aircraft. As in a car, if it doesn’t meet fuel emission standards, it should be scrapped. I think there are many things that can be done but the biggest one is air traffic control. I’m not an expert, but if you add up how many extra hours you spend in the air and the time you spend on the ground waiting to take off, it’s a lot of wasted fuel.

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