The plane went missing during a flight from Indonesia to Singapore shortly after asking to deviate from its planned flight path because of bad weather, and the search for it is set to expand to additional areas tomorrow, according to CNN.
The budget airline has generally received accolades within the airline industry. It ranks as the world’s best low-cost airline, according to the aviation ratings agency Skytrax. The airline’s long-haul subsidiary AirAsiaX also finished second on the list.
AirAsia has actually topped the Skytrax ratings six years in a row, quite an achievement for an airline that was on the brink of failure little more than a decade ago.
The man at the heart of the airline’s spectacular rise is its charismatic CEO, Tony Fernandes.
Before AirAsia became a multibillion-dollar aviation juggernaut, it was a small, struggling airline owned by the Malaysian government. It consisted of nothing more than two aging Boeing 737 jets, 250 employees, and one route, not to mention $40 million of debt.
Together with several partners, Fernandes took control of AirAsia from the Malaysian government in December 2001. He paid 29 cents and assumed the airline’s massive liabilities.
Fernandes, then a 37-year-old music executive, had absolutely no aviation experience to speak of, but he did understand entrepreneurship and the leisure and entertainment market in Southeast Asia.