KUALA LUMPUR – AirAsia boss Tan Sri Tony Fernandes is in the firing line again, this time for making a jibe at customers who “moaned about a refund”.
In an Instagram post today, he shared a picture of himself at klia2 with the caption: “Love me or hate me but when I turned up at the airport was super proud. Packed. And for those who moaned about a refund at least allstars fought through covid and you can still fly. Super proud of my allstars.”
Allstars is an internal employee branding campaign at AirAsia.
However, this did not sit well with some of his customers as they felt his caption was arrogant, seeing that the carrier has been repeatedly criticised over its refund policies.
Instagram user Pistachio Ng commented that Fernandes seemed to “forget that those who moaned spent their hard earned money on service they never received”.
“And if the service was never rendered, how come the money couldn’t be refunded? Definitely nobody could foresee Covid-19 and perhaps unkind sentences have been hurled towards you, but as the leader of a company, be humble to those who still allow you to keep flying,” he added.
Meanwhile, an X (formerly Twitter) user known as JustinTWJ took a screenshot of Fernandes’ post and shared it with the caption: “You rather take people’s money and not provide them the service they paid for? Isn’t that called stealing/scamming?”
Similarly, X user @meispenat is irked by the Instagram post, saying: “it sounded like he doesn’t care about the consumers at all, as long as there’s revenue, they’ll keep doing the same thing.”
User @Alif_Ridzo said it was time for the public to start pressuring lawmakers to change regulations at the Malaysian Aviation Commission, which provides guidelines on refund requests.
However, not everyone is mad at Fernandes – some commenters said they have a love-hate relationship with AirAsia despite flight delays.
Earlier this month, Fernandes was criticised for receiving a massage topless during a management meeting.
“Got to love Indonesia and AirAsia culture that I can have a massage and do a management meeting,” he wrote.
The post was deleted from LinkedIn days later after a wave of public criticism. – October 31, 2023