Tan Sri Tony Fernandes: A visionary entreprenuer

           

Tan Sri Tony Fernandes
Source: asianentrepreneur.org

         One of the traits that an entreprenuer must have is visionary. The meaning of visionary is thinking about or planning the future with imagination or wisdom. To be more precise, a person with visionary trait has the power to predict how a society, industry or country will become in the future. This trait can be seen in Tan Sri Tony Fernades where he has an imaginative ideas and long-range experience for his several companies. When he was a child, he has dreamt of three wonderful things which are operating an airline, owning an English football and Formula One racing team.
         
           Tony Fernandes' vision has turned AirAsia to be one of the famous and well-recognised airlines brands in the world. Many observers are proud of the success of AirAsia all thanks to the responsibility and strong leadership of Tony Fernandes. Back to the time in 2011, Tony Fernandes met up with our fourth Prime Minister. Tun Dr, Mahatir Mohamad. At that time, Dr. Mahatir Mohamad has persuaded Tony Fernandes to buy over a previous airline, AirAsia which was in high debt/

              Thus, Tony Fernandes bought AirAsia at a lowest price of 25 pence in September 2001 by mortgaging his house and spent all his long savings to get hold of the company and transfigure it into an industry player(Channel). Tony Fernandes took over AirAsia in 2001 and during that time, the airline had only two planes and millions of debt. Year 2001 appeared to be a hard time to join the airline industry but Tony Fernandes, CEO of AirAsia insisted on doing so and has risked all he can to reintroduce an aging and indebted airline that he has bought for only 25 pence.

               Apart from this, Tony Fernandes did not have any existing experience in the industry but still he has joined with other teams together to buy over the airline even though he has to mortgaged his house. He made a dream when he was sleeping in his office at Kuala Lumpur's airport of re-introducing AirAsia as a successful budget airline(Suisse). As a result, the AirAsia company had doubled from only two planes to a fleet of 86 planes in order to fly 30 million of people from one destination to another around the world. Tony Fernandes did a great job when he planned to develop the low cost airline on 11 September 2001 as he thought that it will be awesome to be able to help those poort families to travel around the world. This enables them to save on their money and time.

                The implementation and introduction of the low cost airline is only one of the successes that Tony Fernandes manged to gain. Till now, AirAsia has become one of the famous and well-recognised budget airlines in the world (Business, 2010). This example has shown us that Tony Fernandes has managed to achieve his dreams with his visionary trait although he faced with a heavily debt's business in the beginning and able to re-launch AirAsia into a profitable airlines.

                   By looking at Fernandes's achievements of running an airline, this shows that he has visionary trait where each of every entreprenuer should have and has achieved awards for the award of 'Visionaries & Leadership Series' for his fantastic work in AirAsia ( Wikipedia, 2016). Moreover, he also dates to dream big when he was only three years old. Like what Fernandes has quoted, "believe the unbelievable, dream the impossible and don't take no for an answer'.