Air Asia entrepreneur to make Irish investments

WEALTHY MALAYSIAN entrepreneur Tony Fernandes is considering making a number of investments in Ireland via his interests in sportscars, aviation and hotels.

In an exclusive interview with The Irish Times yesterday at Dublin Airport, Mr Fernandes said he intends to explore the possibility of some aspects of his Caterham company’s business being carried out by Dublin Aerospace, an aircraft maintenance company in which he has a 22 per cent stake.

Caterham, which runs a Formula One grand prix team, is working on developing lightweight components for aircraft and two new sportscar models.

“There are many synergies that I see happening and there’s a lot of things that could be done here in terms of servicing and in terms of making items,” he said. “We can put investment into Ireland.”

Mr Fernandes said his Tune budget hotel group has also placed a bid on a site in Dublin.

“It’s somewhere in the middle of Dublin. We have bid on one. We have 10 hotels in London already.”

Mr Fernandes runs low cost carriers Air Asia and Air AsiaX. Dublin Aerospace founder Conor McCarthy is a shareholder in the airline. The Irish company does a small amount of landing gear maintenance for them and Mr Fernandes would like this to increase.

“We might as well,” he said. “It would create jobs here. Rather than send it to a faceless shop. I know the guys here will put in an extra effort.”

He would also like to establish a direct flight to Ireland. “I would love one day when we have the right aircraft to fly to Dublin from Kuala Lumpur,” he said. “When the Airbus A350 comes [in 2016] maybe we can look at that.”

Would there be demand? “Oh definitely. We have a big network into Australia and China. A lot of students come here. It’s not for today but it’s in our plan.”