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This could be to the chagrin of Umno mullahs in the Parliament who saw "tunnel" in tight skirts.

According to Guang Ming Daily yesterday, AirAsia may change the uniform for its female flight attendants, some versions only to get shorter from the knee upwards.

But the damning news on AirAsia was about its finances, as has been carried by Business Times Singapore, January 12.

Quoting Bloomberg Television, the business sheet said AirAsia will stop making bets on the price of oil, after incorrect forecasts contributed to a 16% slide in its share price over the last month.

Excessive speculative hedging?

AirAsia chief executive Tony Fernandes was quoted as saying in the Bloomberg interview that 'we took a bet that oil won't go above US$90 a barrel and it has and it's staying there.'

I must say in financial term that the 'bet', where a short call option was involved and has gone astray in jarring variance, is only more truly depicted as speculative hedging despite the fact the shortfall can be mitigated with alternatives like a long call option -- which principally retains the speculative risks.

As it has come to pass, crude oil rose to a record US$100 a barrel earlier this month instead of falling as AirAsia had predicted, and locked in at US$82.60 per barrel.

If the price of oil remains at that level, AirAsia's earnings could fall by US$2.6 million a month because of speculative hedging, according to Christopher Eng, an analyst at OSK Research in Kuala Lumpur.

'There has been significant selling from AirAsia's foreign shareholders,' Eng wrote in a January 9 report. The drop is 'related to AirAsia's fuel-hedging policy, which some parties considered excessively speculative', he added.

Fidelity International cut its stake by 9.8 million shares as of Dec 24, according to Bloomberg data.

'Tune Airports'?

Last year, some influential parties from Kuala Lumpur have wrongly asked Koh Tsu Koon -- who has no power and jurisdiction over national air transport matters -- to grant an approval to build and own a low cost carrier terminal in Penang via LC Airfied Sdn Bhd, and the project went kaput as the land proposed has now been utilised for other purposes by the federal authority.

Is Fernandes still trying to get to own airports while Abdullah is at the helm of this country?

Perhaps, we should go ask Thaksin about Thai AirAsia, and then go ask the Lee Dynasty why it had behaved differently.