AirAsia, the leading and largest low-cost carrier in Asia, has been recognized as the "top brand to watch" in the UK Trade & Investment's New World Brands annual report.

AirAsia is the only South East Asian company to make the list of top ten brands from emerging markets across Brazil, Russia, India and China.

New World Brands, which was produced in co-operation with the Economist Intelligence Unit, examines many of the world's fastest-growing and most innovative companies from emerging markets.

AirAsia is ranked above other successful companies such as Chery Automobile, Haier, Marcopolo, Reliance and Springs Global.

AirAsia currently flies to more than 60 destinations and boasts the lowest operating cost of any carrier worldwide.

The airline has optimised costs by operating a faster turnaround time, improving aircraft utilization and crew efficiency, and providing a pay-per-use passenger service, all of which results in savings which are passed back to consumers in the form of low fares.

Dato' Sri Tony Fernandes, AirAsia Group CEO, said: "This is a great achievement for AirAsia to be recognized as a top new world brand and reflects our hard work and pioneering attitude to make air travel an affordable reality for everyone across Asia. We always focused on being a global brand and the investment is now beginning to reap the rewards."

According to the report, leading brands from emerging markets are "shaking up industries" and challenging conventional business wisdom while benchmarking themselves against global standards.

Tony Fernandes added: "Despite the current challenging market conditions, AirAsia is still going strong. We have successful joint ventures in Thailand and Indonesia, as well as AirAsia X, the low-cost, long-haul subsidiary of AirAsia. Our fleet in Malaysia has been fully upgraded with the more modern Airbus A320s. We are vigilant in our efforts to maintain AirAsia's notoriously low fares, and our disciplined low-cost model sets a global standard for airline efficiency."

AirAsia was also recently ranked Top 5 among Asia Pacific's airline brands, ahead of Malaysia Airlines and Qantas, among others, in the Top 1000 Brands 2008 survey conducted by TNS for Hong Kong-based Media magazine.

Photograph: On Dec. 30, 2006, a Boeing 737 operated by AirAsia took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA). Photo by CARNOC.com message board member - cafcwei.