New York Listing for Airline AirAsia Capital A on Horizon with eVTOLs in Offing

Tony Fer­nan­des, own­er of AirA­sia low-cost air­line Cap­i­tal A group, is plan­ning “two” New York (NY) list­ings, reports the FT.com. Fer­nan­des, bet­ter known in the UK for his major­i­ty share­hold­ing of QPR FC, as well as being founder of the Cater­ham F1 For­mu­la One team, told the media last month, he is gun­ning for two NY list­ings, one for the air­line and the oth­er a dig­i­tal “super app”, which offers ser­vices from trav­el to take­aways.

Renowned for his quotes, the colour­ful Fer­nan­des told the FT, “If you want to be an actor, you’re prob­a­bly going to want to end up in Hol­ly­wood at some stage in your career. We think the time is right for part of Cap­i­tal A group to be list­ed in the Unit­ed States.”

Tony Fer­nan­des and AirA­sia Stew­ardess­es

His busi­ness group, which changed name ear­li­er this year, had pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered merg­ing its dig­i­tal busi­ness­es via a SPAC, with hopes of rais­ing over USD300 mil­lion, but this was post­poned dur­ing the pan­dem­ic for finan­cial rea­sons.

Fer­nan­des, who has recent­ly moved into ecom­merce and dig­i­tal mar­kets, said the issue had now been resolved. Mean­while, Cap­i­tal A’s shares remain under Prac­tice Note 17 on the Malaysian stock exchange (a list­ing for groups in finan­cial dis­tress). Fer­nan­des insists it was a “solv­able account­ing issue”, which “doesn’t reflect the fun­da­men­tals of the com­pa­ny”.

What makes the poten­tial air­line list­ing inter­est­ing for read­ers of evtolinsights.com, is AirAsia’s recent eVTOL leas­ing deal with Avolon to cre­ate a ride-shar­ing plat­form in South­east Asia. The com­pa­nies have signed a non-bind­ing MoU (Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing) to lease a min­i­mum of 100 Ver­ti­cal Aero­space VX4 eVTOL air­craft from Irish com­pa­ny, Avolon.

In addi­tion, Dublin-based Avolon will part­ner with AirA­sia to com­mer­cialise such craft and devel­op a UAM (urban air mobil­i­ty) plat­form in the region. AirAsia’s trav­el and lifestyle mobile “Super App,” will sup­port this. Mean­while, Ver­ti­cal con­sis­tent­ly state, its craft will be fly­ing com­mer­cial­ly by 2025.

Avolon has now placed 90 per­cent of a 500 VX4 order book, under­lin­ing the demand and pop­u­lar­i­ty for the air­craft from some of the world’s lead­ing air­lines.

Dómh­nal Slat­tery, CEO of Avolon, said, “Tony Fer­nan­des is an avi­a­tion pio­neer who has built AirA­sia into one of the lead­ing air­lines in the world and has now also cre­at­ed South­east Asia’s fastest-grow­ing Super App anchored on trav­el.”

He con­tin­ued, “We are delight­ed to part­ner with AirA­sia who share our vision of rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing the future of air trav­el and look for­ward to work­ing with Tony, and his team, on their eVTOL jour­ney.”

Tony Fer­nan­des, com­ment­ed, “Inno­va­tion has always been in our DNA and using tech­nol­o­gy to look at more effi­cient and sus­tain­able ways of doing things is a core focus across Cap­i­tal A.”

He added, “The dig­i­tal era is now. In the VX4, we have iden­ti­fied what we believe will be the eVTOL air­craft of choice and we are thrilled to be the launch air­line for the air­craft in South­east Asia.”

Tony Fer­nan­des and Dómh­nal Slat­tery

Stephen Fitz­patrick, CEO of Ver­ti­cal, remarked, “AirA­sia pro­vides many fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ties to trav­el around some of the most beau­ti­ful and diverse coun­tries in the world, and I am thrilled that we will be bring­ing zero emis­sions flight to peo­ple all across Asia.”

It is unclear which SPAC Fer­nan­des may choose for his AirA­sia float, but when com­bined with the “Super App” and the already exist­ing eVTOL foot­print, this is an attrac­tive share to look out for in 2023.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.airasia.com/en/gbhttps://www.avolon.aero/

https://www.avolon.aero

(News Source: https://www.ft.com/)