Air Asia was pretty useless and existed only because the son of the CEO of Air Asia played Graal and convinced his dad to sponsor the game in some way. Functionally, I'm pretty sure the only thing that you could do there was farm (and it wasn't even great if I remember).
I don't think removing any of the useless houses or areas objectively made the game worse, I think if anyone feels that way then it's a good indicator that you're a little nostalgic over the game and no matter what happens you'll always think the old days were better (which is fine).