Aviation entrepreneur Tony Fernandes, the boss of one of Asia’s largest and most well-known budget airlines, has come out as a supporter of flight attendants taking power naps because it proves just how hard they work.
Fernandes is credited with transforming AirAsia from a struggling government-owned airline in Malaysia into one of Southeast Asia’s most iconic brands with the slogan ‘Now Everyone Can Fly.’
Inspired by the way that European low-cost airlines like Ryanair and EasyJet transformed air travel across the continent, Fernandes decided to put his life savings at stake to see if the same idea would work in Southeast Asia.
Since its humble beginnings in 2001, AirAsia has been a major success story and has expanded across the region.
Despite working so hard to transform AirAsia into the powerhouse that it is today, Fernandes recognizes that his staff are still human, explaining exactly what he thinks of staffers taking a nap in a cheeky post on Instagram.
What might be the worst thing you could get caught doing in front your company’s chief executive? Sleeping on the job would probably be high up there, but Fernandes saw the funny side when he spotted a member of cabin crew napping in the airline’s offices.
Fernandes took a snap of the tired crew member (with the flight attendant’s permission) but rather than taking this as an opportunity to discipline the worker, Fernandes wrote on Instagram:
“It’s a tough job being a Cabin Crew. People don’t realize how tough it is. I encourage my all-stars [employees] to take a nap if they are tired. We have many sleep pods in the office.”
Fernandes continued: “Full respect to my Cabin crew who work so hard. Just to be clear, all my all-stars work incredibly hard. From engineering to pilots to Guest service to accounts. How we survived Covid is something else.”
The charismatic chief executive has won praise from both employees and passengers for his approach to napping employees, although some of Fernandes’ other social media posts haven’t landed so well.
In 2023, Fernandes suffered a public backlash when he shared a shirtless photo of himself having a back massage while leading a meeting at AirAsia’s head office.
Fernandes said in his LinkedIn post that a colleague suggested he get a massage because he had faced a long and stressful week. He was quickly barraged with criticism over the stunt, and the post was eventually deleted.
Fernandes later clarified that he didn’t mean to offend anyone.
