This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on March 3, 2025 - March 9, 2025

AIRASIA Group Bhd’s latest promotion offering travellers “free seats” from Kuala Lumpur to a range of domestic and regional destinations has drawn the attention of the Malaysian Aviation Commission (Mavcom) as the low-cost carrier appears to be at risk of breaching the aviation regulator’s consumer protection code.

The carrier rolled out its “free seats” promotion on Feb 15, offering up to 15 million promotional seats across 130 destinations within its network for travellers who book flight tickets from Feb 15 to 23 via its ticket-booking platform airasia.com or the AirAsia MOVE booking application for travel between July 1, 2025, and June 15, 2026. The advertisement appeared on social media platforms like YouTube and billboards in the Klang Valley, as well as the carrier’s website.

In the ad’s fine print, the carrier states that its free seat fare is only applicable for the base fare and excludes airport taxes, fuel surcharges and other fees. It is also subject to availability.

However, under the Malaysian Aviation Consumer Protection (Amendment) Code 2024 (MACPC), paragraph 3(1) states that for the purposes of advertisement of an airfare, an airline must publish an all-inclusive price of the airfare, which shall consist of the base fare (including all charges payable to the airline), any taxes and fees imposed by the government, any fees and charges prescribed under any written law, fuel surcharge and such other fees and charges as determined by the commission to be imposed on consumers by providers of air services.

To provide greater clarity, the commission had issued guidance on how the industry should and shouldn’t advertise their airfares last September. These guidelines clearly state that the use of the words “free”, “without charge” or similar descriptions are not permitted when there are applicable fees and charges that consumers need to pay.

“Advertisements must not use the words ‘free’, ‘without charge’ or similar descriptions where there are any payments that have to be incurred by the consumer. Where such payments need to be made, consumers must be made clearly aware of all the payments involved. For example, government-imposed taxes,” according to the guidelines.

When asked for comment, a spokesperson for AirAsia says the carrier is engaging with Mavcom on the matter, but did not elaborate.

“Mavcom is aware of AirAsia’s recent advertisement and is currently reviewing the matter,” a Mavcom spokesperson told The Edge when asked about AirAsia’s latest free seats promotion.

It is worth noting that it is not the first time that AirAsia has been flagged in relation to its ads. A check on Mavcom’s website shows that the commission had fined AirAsia Bhd (the carrier’s Malaysia-based operations) and its medium-haul affiliate AirAsia X Bhd (KL:AAX) RM160,000 each, for advertising misleading air ticket prices in December 2018. Both entities had made the full penalty payment to the regulator in October 2018 and November 2018 respectively.

In September 2019, Mavcom issued fines of RM200,000 each on AirAsia and AAX for contravening the MACPC, which requires full disclosure of the final price of an airfare.

It remains to be seen whether AirAsia’s latest promotion warrants any further action by Mavcom as the commission is expected to be disbanded and its functions of regulating economic and commercial matters relating to the civil aviation industry transferred to its technical aviation counterpart, the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia, in the second half of the year. If such “free seat” ads are permitted, it is likely to open the floodgates to similar ones by other airlines. 

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