SINGAPORE - Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia Tuesday said passenger numbers remained strong despite the global slowdown and there were no plans to slow the pace of its route expansion.

"Our business does not appear to be affected presently," AirAsia's group chief executive and founder, Tony Fernandes, said at a media briefing in Singapore.

"Basically people still want to fly, people still want to travel but they are looking for better value... so we don't appear to be losing out from this slowdown and so we are continuing with our expansion."

The global economic crisis has severely affected the full-service carriers, which have had to cut capacity as passenger and cargo demand shrank.

But budget airlines like AirAsia are actually seeing more business, said Fernandes.

"We are obviously seizing on this opportunity when some of the other premium airlines are cutting back on their growth and people are transferring their business from legacy airlines to low-cost carriers," he said.

"So we seem to be going against the trend."

Forward bookings at AirAsia for the second and third quarters are actually higher than the same period last year, said Fernandes without giving numbers.

Fernandes was in Singapore for the official launch of AirAsia's new services between the city-state and four Indonesian destinations - Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta and Bali.

"AirAsia's latest Indonesia-Singapore link forms the final piece of our network jigsaw puzzle as it resembles the importance of the AirAsia network, making it the most powerful in Asia," he said.

The new services between Singapore and the four Indonesian destinations began a week ago with forward bookings of 80,000 seats, AirAsia said.

Launched in December 2001 with just two aircraft, AirAsia has since grown to become the region's leading discount airline with an extensive network covering more than 122 routes backed by a fleet of over 70 planes.

-AFP