“I came from the music business, which reputedly has the biggest egos, ...” — Tony Fernandes Quote

I came from the music business, which reputedly has the biggest egos, but I really think the airline world caps it.

My whole life has always been about looking for that person that money can't buy in that they've got a bee in their bonnet.

When I started my airline business, I didn't know everything, right? If I start up a newspaper tomorrow, I might get ripped off by journalists. You'd be naive to think you know everything from day one.

I look for people who have drive, who have ambition, who are humble. I've hired many people at very strange places.

In AirAsia, we consider ourselves basically a dream factory. We deliberately decided that we wanted a company where people can pursue their passion, and we wanted to make use of all the talent that we have in-house.

If you pay your credit card off every month, get a rewards card. One that gives you airline miles or that will give you 1 percent cash back at least on every purchase.

Airline food is cooked in an oven and then kept warm. Space station food is often cooked in an oven and then thermo-stabilised, irradiated or dehydrated and then stored for a year or two before you even get to it.

In 1975 I decided that there was no future in flying (airline jobs were impossible to get, and who wants a job where you are judged only by seniority?) and headed off to grad school.

Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that. The Titanic saved lives because we're building bigger and bigger ships. So these people died, but we have effectively improved the safety of the system, and nothing failed in vain.