By Putu Deny Wijaya
AirAsia Malaysia Eyes Return to Indian Airports
AirAsia Malaysia is planning a comeback to Indian airports. In the next months, the airline has big ambitions for India.
AirAsia Malaysia recently welcomed the restart of flights to India, with the airline’s executives declaring ambitious future plans. The airline has already resumed flights to certain South Indian towns, with others slated to begin in the coming weeks. AirAsia hopes to develop a stable network between Malaysia and India by the end of this year, buoyed by an increase in international travel.
AirAsia Malaysia has resumed flights between Kuala Lumpur and a number of Indian cities, boosting direct connection between the two countries. The airline has reopened flights to India following a two-year break because of the COVID-19 epidemic, as previously reported.
On April 13th, Bo Lingam, Group CEO of AirAsia Aviation Group Limited (AAAGL), and Riad Asmat, CEO of AirAsia Malaysia, met with Ms. C. Sushma, Chargé d’Affaires of the High Commission of India in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to celebrate the restart of services between the two nations. Ms. C. Sushma expressed her thoughts as follows:
“With the opening of both countries’ borders, we are confident that two-way traffic will resume smoothly and grow progressively. This is an important step in reconnecting India and Malaysia as people-to-people connectivity lie at the foundation of this important partnership.”
On April 1st, AirAsia Malaysia began flying between Kuala Lumpur and Bengaluru (2x weekly) and Chennai (4x weekly), as well as Tiruchirappalli (4x weekly). On April 18th, April 22nd, and May 1st, respectively, flights to Kochi (1x weekly), Kolkata (1x weekly), and Hyderabad (4x weekly) will begin.
From next month, AirAsia will begin five new flights between India and Thailand. On May 1st, flights from Jaipur and Kochi to Bangkok will begin, followed by flights from Kolkata on May 2nd. On May 4th, additional services from Chennai and Bengaluru to Bangkok will begin.
In the following months, Asmat intends to develop a stable network between India and Kuala Lumpur. Noting the carrier’s significance in the Indian market, he said that AirAsia will continue to assess and extend its network to meet the growing demand for air travel, which would include the introduction of 30 total weekly flights from Malaysia to India by the end of May.
He also said that AirAsia Malaysia will soon return to pre-Covid capacity, operating more than 140 weekly flights to and from India, with a total of 71 weekly flights planned by the end of 2022.
Both India and Malaysia have eased entrance rules, allowing airlines to resume lucrative routes that had previously been halted. While India’s government reopened its international borders to tourists in October 2021 and its commercial airspace to scheduled foreign flights on March 27, 2022, Malaysia’s border reopened to international passengers on April 1st.
The India-Malaysia route sees a lot of passenger traffic, and AirAsia would want to take advantage of it once again. The group’s long-haul budget carrier AirAsia X will begin flights to New Delhi on April 20th, so it’s not only South India that’s getting the love.
Putu Deny Wijaya was always an aviation enthusiast by heart, growing up in Indonesia where air transport is very vital. His first love is The Queen of The Skies, serving the trunk routes between Jakarta and Denpasar. He brought along this passion with him throughout college by conducting his bachelor study abroad in the Netherlands for the purpose of experiencing a nonstop 14-hour long-haul flight. For Putu the sky’s the limit when talking about aviation. He hopes that he would be able to combine his passion for aviation and knowledge of finance at the same time.
