The failure of AirAsia to continue operating in Japan has come as a boon to Spring Airlines. Asia’s largest LCC operator Air Asia decided to withdraw from the budget airline market in Japan recently. AirAsia was one of the significant competitors to Spring Airlines.

Zhang Wuan, a spokesperson of Spring Airlines, chose to play down AirAsia’s withdrawal from Japan’s budget airline market and said that this is not at all concerned with Spring Airlines as such. He said that the company’s target is in different markets. He said that the airline had been mainly operating between Chinese and Japanese cities, whereas AirAsia had been operating flights between Japan and Southeast Asia.

However, Li Xiaojin, a professor at the Civil Aviation University of China, said that he was concerned about the future of Spring Airlines in Japan’s budget airline market. He said that it is doubtful whether the airline will be able survive in the Japanese market given the fact that AirAsia had a dismal record there and finally withdrew its services from here.

Spring Airlines is the first budget carrier to begin operations in China. The airline provides affordable fares to its customers and outwitted its rivals with an average seat occupancy rate of 95 percent ever since its debut in 2005. This had been the highest occupancy rate so far in China’s civil aviation industry. The airline began operations on its first international route in July 2010 between Shanghai and Tokyo.