Bangladesh-born Bobby A. Haque is looking forward to his role as president of Asia Atlantic Airlines (AAA), a new Bangkok-based charter flight business which begins operations with flights from Suvarnabhumi International Airport to Tokyo (Narita) and Osaka (Kansai).
The airline is a joint venture between Japan's HIS Group, for which Haque has worked for 30 years, and Thailand's Baiyoke Group.
From Aug 20 until Nov 4, AAA offers daily flights between Suvarnabhumi and Narita airports, and will fly to Osaka daily between Sept 11-27.
"Every day, we fly more than 90% or 95% load factor," said Haque.
"More than 75% of our customers are Japanese and the rest Thais. Our goal is to make it 50-50, eventually." The company has about 150 staff, including 24 pilots and 70 flight attendants, and has initially leased two Boeing 767-300ERs which can serve up to 269 passengers each. It also plans to lease one aircraft every six months and aims to have 100 aircraft eventually, as it has the ambitious goal to of being one of the largest charter businesses in the world.
Apart from Japan, AAA also plans to link Bangkok to destinations in East Asia including China and South Korea where it will launch services in December, before expanding to Europe and the Pacific in the future.
Why did HIS Group decide to venture into the airline industry?
To start with because it is a Japanese-based travel agent with 32 years in the business. Starting with two people, to date it has 280 branch offices in Japan and 150 branches all over the world, with 11,000 people. Their main focus is on handling overseas travellers from Japan. HIS Group handled about 3 million Japanese travellers last year. When it is high season it is very difficult for travel agents to get the number of seats they need. So the demand is there and we can grow faster if we have a capacity.
Why did HIS Group decide to partner with Baiyoke Group?
It is because Baiyoke has been our partner for a long time. It is an opportunity to do business for the future.
We will not serve only HIS, and not just Japan, we will do business with anyone or other travel agencies in Japan and in Thailand if they need charter flights or shared seats.
For example, after the Japanese visa-free policy was applied, flights from Bangkok to Hokkaido now are full. There are no seats for the months of September and October. So people are coming and flights are full. So it's an opportunity for us. We have aircraft so if travel agents want more flights, we are happy to talk.
Why did you name it Asia Atlantic Airlines?
We used to think about the Asia-Pacific, but we realised that the Pacific is not big enough. So we have planned all the way to offer our services across the Atlantic. This is our ambition _ we want to reach from Asia all over to the Atlantic.
What made you decide to have your headquarters in Thailand?
We decided to open our office here because Thailand is one of our important markets and because it has always been one of the most popular global destinations people visit.
Also, the outbound tourism of Thailand has grown rapidly. We also look at the year 2015 when the open-sky policy will be implemented. That's a lot more opportunity to fly within Asean countries. Our future plans include Hawaii and Guam, and maybe Europe as well.
What have you done to differentiate your service from other charter flight operators?
We are a tailor-made airline. Flexibility is also our key word. We are a new company so we are flexible to help our travel partners. In the future, we hope to add more flexibility to satisfy customer requests, which could include food and drinks. For example, if there is a requirement to provide a glass of Champagne to passengers in economy class, we will because they are loyal customers. Yes we can do that as long as the travel agent pays for it though.
What services do you offer passengers?
Now we fly to Narita airport daily, so we provide the services any scheduled airline would. We provide meals, snacks and soft drinks, but we don't provide free alcohol [for economy class passengers]. We also offer pillows and blankets, but not entertainment and no mileage. We also offer free luggage load, but not yet an airport lounge.
We do our best to differentiate ourselves from others. We put our aircraft wherever there is demand. For example, there is high demand to fly to Japan during August to September, then we fly to Japan. October to December if there is high demand, say to Korea, we fly our aircraft to Korea.
Lately charter flights have been receiving bad press for leaving passengers stranded in the countries they travel to. Can you guarantee this will not be repeated with your airline?
This is the reason we do our own charter flights, to guarantee professional service. Our paid-up capital is quite a big amount and our investor is HIS Group, which is a listed company in Japan. Our service is just beginning, and our task is to remain reliable and provide punctual service, and to say that we offer what we promise and continue our business to fly to Japan and other destinations.
I do not expect all travel agents to trust us overnight. This is something we have to build. We will try our best to offer reliable service with reasonable prices. We started our business with two aircraft. So if one aircraft is not able to be used for whatever reason, we still have another one to pick up our passengers and not leave them behind. We also have a plan to increase by one aircraft every six months to make sure that we have enough aircraft to provide for our customers when the need arises.
