Daven Tamayo

AirAsia Move denies airfare manipulation claims

Article (news)

Kevin Alabaso

ABS-CBN News

MANILA — AirAsia&#x27;s booking affiliate AirAsia Move denied on Thursday claims that it manipulated local aircraft flights.This was after the Philippine government claimed that AirAsia sold overpriced ticket flights to Tacloban in Leyte for about P40,000 or $720.AirAsia said that the flight being referred to was &quot;non-existent&quot; and labeled it as a &quot;ghost listing.&quot;&quot;The complaint we investigated, there was no transaction made, thank God for that. A ghost listing is something you see that—oh wow, there&#x27;s a flight, ticket available, but it&#x27;s at high price. You click on it and there&#x27;s nothing. So what&#x27;s happening with upstream suppliers is they&#x27;re not updating the sold-out flights. For those sold-out flights, the listing still remains. It does impact, for me, the price perception of Move as a budget OTA (online travel agency), so I&#x27;m very concerned about it,&quot; Nadia Zahir Omer, AirAsia Move&#x27;s CEO, said in an interview with ANC&#x27;s Market Edge.Civil aviation authorities have since begun their probe of the allegation after Transport Secretary Vince Dizon called out AirAsia Move.<div><a href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/business/2025/6/2/transport-chief-wants-airasia-move-taken-down-over-very-high-fares-to-leyte-1449">Transport chief wants AirAsia Move taken down over &#x27;very high&#x27; fares to Leyte</a></div>The Philippine National Police&#x27;s cybercrime unit were also instructed to temporarily prevent the platform from selling tickets in the Philippines.AirAsia Move, however, maintained that its commission rates for ticket sales remained at just two percent.&quot;We shared to them the details of our logs and ledgers for them to see that we only still are at one to two percent. We don&#x27;t indulge in dynamic pricing, because already the airlines are doing dynamic pricing. If we started doing it on top, it would lead to even more volatility,&quot; she said.

AirAsia said that the flight being referred to was "non-existent" and labeled it as a "ghost listing."

AirAsia said that the flight being referred to was "non-existent" and labeled it as a "ghost listing."