A senior minister on Thursday accused Malaysia's budget airline AirAsia of misleading consumers with its low fares advertisement.
Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadzir, culture, arts and tourism minister, said that AirAsia should correct its advertisement, alleging the way it was presently promoting its carrier was misleading.
The advert promotes the airline's low-cost fares, but the minister alleges that the offer only applies to 20 to 30 percent of the seats available on each flight, while the rest matched any other airline.
"I just hope AirAsia will correct the way it promotes itself. There is no need to fight (over the issue). I have said my view and if my view has its basis, they just have to correct it," he was quoted as saying by Bernama news agency.
AirAsia offers limited tickets costing less than a dollar on certain domestic destinations, but Abdul Kadir alleges that AirAsia allocates the majority of its cheap tickets to its tour company and leaves very few for the public.
A consumer group in the southern Johor state also urged AirAsia to stop promoting "misleading" low-fare advertising pending investigations by the government.
"The airline would claim that the low-fare tickets were sold out whenever enquiries were made," S. Gunapati, vice-president of Johor Consumers' Association, was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times newspaper on Thursday.
"This is unfair to consumers, especially when the advertisements keep appearing in newspapers to highlight the low fares when they are not so," he added.
AirAsia has successfully brought low-cost flights to intra-Malaysian travel despite initial forecasts of gloom by aviation analysts.
The carrier took delivery of two Boeing 737-300 aircraft in October, increasing its fleet to nine, and it aims to have 22 aircraft by late 2004.
It has held talks with Richard Branson's Virgin Blue Holdings on issues including the possibility of Virgin taking a stake in the local carrier.
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