Thai AirAsia and Amadeus have signed an agreement by which the airline will distribute and sell its seats through the Amadeus system, in order to reach a wider international market.

The partnership, which was formalised last week, will see all Amadeus travel agents and corporate customers across the globe have full access to book seats on Thai AirAsia and other carriers in the AirAsia family; AirAsia, Indonesia AirAsia, as well as Fly Asian Xpress (FAX).

Commenting on the agreement, Thai AirAsia Chief Executive Officer Khun Tassapon Bijleveld said: “In choosing to partner with Amadeus, we are able to tap into their vast distribution network and is an important development in supporting our growth strategy to increase our passenger traffic from six million this year to eight million in 2007.”

Under the agreement, Amadeus will deploy a next generation distribution solution for ticketless travel on Thai AirAsia.

David Brett, President Amadeus Asia Pacific said: “Our partnership with Thai AirAsia reinforces the value of travel agency distribution as an important complementary sales channel for low cost carriers. More importantly, it reiterates our long-term commitment to the low cost airline sector and underpins our confidence in our new generation solutions for this segment, as well as our promise to the travel agency community, to continually offer the widest possible range of content through this critical distribution channel.”

According to International Air Transport Association in their 2005 to 2009 forecast summary, all international passenger routes will grow by 5.6 per cent while travel within Asia Pacific is estimated to grow to 6.8 per cent.

In year 2005, 46.7 million passengers took off from Changi airport; 45 million each from Hong Kong international airport, Bangkok and KL international airport while Seoul Incheon attracted 30 million.

Thai AirAsia, Thailand’s largest and most popular low-fare airline, which evolved from a dream to bring air travel to everyone, zooms towards its third year of operations on February 3, 2007 with a fleet of 11 aircraft flying to 10 domestic and 9 international destinations.
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