Malaysia is set to reopen its borders to international flights from next Friday, April 1, 2022. Carriers in the region have been preparing to serve the pent up demand for international air travel. AirAsia, which has continued to expand capacity in the region as several countries reopened their borders, is preparing to add even more capacity from its core market.
Bo Lingam, Group CEO of AirAsia Aviation Group Limited (AAAGL) said: “We would like to applaud the governments around the region for their decision to reopen borders, removing travel restrictions with minimal testing requirements, thus making travel easy for everyone. We’re thrilled to be resuming more flights in all of our core markets in Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia and to be adding additional services to some of AirAsia’s most popular international destinations including Bali, Manila, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Phuket and more, starting in April. Domestic flying also continues to soar across the group. We have recently launched four new domestic routes in Malaysia from Kuching to Langkawi, Penang to Sibu, Johor Bahru to Bintulu and Kota Kinabalu to Kuala Terengganu this year.
“Regionally, we have seen similarly encouraging developments for domestic and international services in Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. We will continue to review our network which evolves based on a number of factors including demand. New services will be announced in due course as the world continues to gradually reopen. While our domestic services across the group have grown by 156% in recent months due to significant consumer demand, and by 50% for international, we expect to return to 100% or more of pre-Covid domestic and international flying by the end of this year.”
Riad Asmat, CEO of AirAsia Malaysia said: “Finally the world is starting to reopen and thanks to the reopening of Malaysia’s border we can plan to relaunch many new routes from our main hub at klia2. For the reassurance of our guests, safety is always our utmost priority and we continuously strive to provide world-class service quality and a stellar guest experience with a commitment to adhering to stringent safety rules and procedures.
Malaysia Airlines has also increased capacity to selected international routes within its network. Starting from March 27, 2022, Malaysia Airlines will increase frequency to its flagship Kuala Lumpur-London route to 11 times weekly and will return to full double daily service from 1 July onwards.
On the same date, the national carrier will be reinstating scheduled commercial services to India, namely New Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, and Hyderabad, after close to 24 months suspension due to border closure between the two countries.
From April 1, Malaysia Airlines will increase capacity to Bangkok from seven times weekly to 14 times weekly and to Phuket from once-a-week to three times weekly. This comes after Thailand recently relaxed entry requirements for fully vaccinated international travellers. Additionally, Malaysia Airlines has begun flying to Bali, with once-a-week flight, beginning 11 March 2022. Fully vaccinated customers travelling to Singapore can continue to use the Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) scheme from Kuala Lumpur and Penang, providing them with quarantine-free access.
Meanwhile, the airline will also increase its recently reinstated flights to Australia from five times weekly to seven times weekly to Sydney and from two times weekly to five times weekly to Perth.
These are positive signs that the region is opening up to international air travel, however Hong Kong entry requirements, albeit recently relaxed slightly for residents, are still impacting demand and with certain areas of China being locked down, it could still be some months yet before the industry benefits from the full reopening of the region for airlines.