V Air, a Taiwanese-based low-cost carrier and subsidiary of the 64-year-old TransAsia Airways, has announced an aggressive plan to break even after two years of operating, according to the airline's chief commercial officer Steve Allen.
The airline has registered capital of US$100 million (3.3 billion baht). It is the second budget airline operating in Taiwan after the launch of Tiger Airways Taiwan, a joint venture between Taiwan's China Airlines and Singapore's Tiger Airways, last September.
The airline is called V Air after a Facebook contest last January. According to Allen, "V" means victory, a symbol for "voyage, vision, vivid" — young and funky that everybody can associate with.
V Air received a certificate to fly on Nov 27 last year and launched its inaugural flight from Taipei Taoyuan airport to Bangkok's Don Mueang airport on Dec 17 and to Chiang Mai airport on Jan 7.
It owns one Airbus A321 aircraft and plans to rent more A320s, aiming at least five aircraft to serve up to 10 routes by the end of this year. It will also expand the fleet with at least 2-3 aircraft every year.
Within this first quarter, the airline will launch direct flights to Korea and Japan.
Why did V Air select Bangkok as its first destination?
We use Facebook as a medium for a lot of communication, like the naming of our airline and for surveys, such as one which asked, "where do you want us to fly?" Bangkok was in the top five destinations for Taiwanese people and that's why we are here now.
We also fly to Chiang Mai, taking over from our sister company-TransAsia's flight from Taipei to Chiang Mai. This flight is two times a week to mainly serve business customers.
Why does the airline use the Formosan black bear as the logo?
V Bear is an endangered species and unique to Taiwan. It has a white V shape on the neck; every Taiwanese person knows the V bear.
With a heart-shaped nose, smiley face and peace symbol fingers, the mascot is widely appreciated by our target group — females who have purchasing power and make decisions regarding travel. One of the benefits of having V Bear as a mascot is that it is fun and also approachable.
What makes V Air different from other low-cost carriers (LCC)?
I think the V Bear makes us different. We are a real Taiwanese LCC, from the ownership structure, management, food, in-flight products and our V Bear mascot. We will be an LCC with the human touch; we will not pack people in like sardines in economy class. Our Airbus A321 has 194 seats and A320 has 180 seats. (The seat layout is a 3-3 configuration.)
We also offer premium seats called Fancy-V, offering extra leg room between 46-49-inches. Fast-V is for seats between rows 2-5, designed for passengers who want to have fast boarding and disembarkation. Fit-V is for general seats with 32-inch legroom, more than for regular LCC seats.
We also offer flexible ticketing, allowing passengers to change flight date, time or route and we charge fees for this.
How do you compete with your rival Tiger Airways Taiwan?
Competition is good for consumers. We will offer high-level customer service. We have a Taiwan-based call centre offering a Chinese and English language service from 8am to 7pm and this will be extended to 24 hours within this year.
We also have a partner in Thailand. Air People International is our general sales agent and our representative. We also have an online helpdesk that is integrated into our website Facebook's fan pages in Taiwan and Thailand.
We will have fan pages in Korea and Japan soon. We will keep listening to what our customers want as they drive our business.
How does V Air work with sister company TransAsia Airways?
To be cost effective, we share some things with TransAsia Airways, such as its call centre, with allocated staff for V Air's service in Taiwan, catering service, IT and accounting.
What will we see after 12 months of operating?
We will continue to grow and enhance our products and add more partners, routes and aircraft. So 2015 will be a growth year for V Air. There may be another route in Thailand or hopefully another flight to Bangkok; probably an overnight flight which will allow all connections to Japan and Korea. We have a number of destinations we are looking at, like Fukuoka and Sapporo.
Our target for the first year is to serve about 800,000 passengers and the second year about 1.5 million. By the end of 2016, we will probably have eight aircraft covering 15 destinations and we will break even within two years. We must be aggressive in our plan. We looked at Peach Aviation in Japan, which understood the Japanese market very well and broke even within two years. This is our benchmark. It is possible.
