AirAsia is a beast with many heads. It started off as a low-cost airline formed by a government agency in Malaysia in 1993. Operations began in 1996, but by September 2001 (no, before THAT happened) the airline was heavily indebted and was bought by couple of private equity guys for a total sum of $0.26 US.

Over the 2000s and early 2010s, a significant number of affiliate airlines based in various Asian nations (China, Vietnam, India, Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand) were set up. There was also AirAsia X which is the long haul operation of the airline. You can tell that this aircraft, an Airbus A330-300 (more specifically, an A330-343 variant) belonged to that airline because of the white "X" over the engine nacelles and the tail, and the logo "now everyone can fly eXtra long" with the emphasis on the X.

It took a while to find out where this aircraft had gone to as at the time of writing (August 2022), but eventually I found the plansepotters.net website which states that it had been leased to the parent company AirAsia under the registration 9M-VVA in November 2021. This corresponds with the last scheduled flight for the 9M XXW registration on FlightAware; it looks to have been some sort of sightseeing flight starting and ending at Kuala Lumpa airport on Wednesday 16 October 2021. (That was when we were still in pandemic mode, so there were still limited international options.)

As 9M-VVA, it has been bouncing around various Asian airports to and from KL, the most recent flight being a week ago (12 August 2022 at the time of writing) to Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka India and back.

AirAsia has a single A330-300, which would of course be this one.

When AirAsia X announced flights to Australia in 2007, CEO Tony Fernandes said he would be avoiding Sydney Airport due to its high fees. Instead, the airline would concentrate on cheaper alternatives such as Melbourne's Avalon Airport. Clearly, he must have had a change of heart in the following 10 years.