The Asian carrier has configured the A350-900 in a 253-seat arrangement across three classes – 42 in Business, 24 in Premium Economy and 187 in Economy. It currently has orders for 67 A350-900s having placed an additional order for four aircraft last year. Seven of these will now be delivered with an Ultra-Long Range capability for flights of up to 19 hours.
The new four times weekly link from Kuala Lumpur will add to the destination’s established links to Bangkok (China Southern, Shenzhen Airlines), Hong Kong (China Southern), Singapore (Jetstar Asia) and Taipei (China Southern) and will bring new connectivity across Asia and the Pacific through the AirAsia and AirAsia X networks from Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
AirAsia X is planning to add Auckland, the largest and most populous urban area in New Zealand, as a tag on its existing daily Kuala Lumpur – Gold Coast service and is expected to open reservations this week. It previously served Christchurch, the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand but closed the route after just 15 months of operation.
The new arrangement will initially debut in the final quarter and will enter service from December 1, 2015 on both the Dubai – Bangkok and Dubai – Copenhagen routes, and will also serve Dubai – Kuala Lumpur and Dubai – Manchester from January 1, 2016.
The new link to New Chitose Airport, located to the southeast of Chitose and Tomakomai, and the largest facility on Hokkaido, Japan’s second largest island will be introduced from October 1, 2015 and is targeted to attract the mobile inbound Japanese tourist market and support their interest in exploring the wider Asian market via the airline’s own network and its short-haul AirAsia Group partners.
British Airways has announced it will introduce its first Boeing 787-9 into its fleet in September 2015 and will initially deploy the larger Dreamliner variant on its route between London Heathrow and Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, India from the start of the winter 2015/2016 schedule in late October.
The troubled Asian national carrier Malaysia Airlines will be completely revamped as a business through the remainder of the year as its new boss takes drastic action to return the loss-making operator to profitability. Christoph Mueller, who joined as chief executive officer earlier this year from Aer Lingus has played important roles in the restructuring the Irish carrier and other European flag carriers.
Speaking to Routesonline on the sidelines of the Routes Asia Strategy Summit, where he was a panellist discussing airport infrastructure and whether countries could keep with the growing demand for air travel, Datuk Badilisham Ghazali, managing director of Malaysia Airports Holdings, said the company doesn’t simply want to grow with airline partners, but to anticipate their requirements ahead of time.
The new four times weekly route was inaugurated on February 13, 2015 and is the only direct flight between the Malaysian capital and Jiangbei International Airport in Chongqing, one of the five national central cities in China. The city is a major manufacturing centre and transportation hub and serves as the economic centre of the upstream Yangtze basin.
The Tokyo Narita – Kuala Lumpur flight will return to the ANA network from September 1, 2015 and will be flown on a daily basis by a Boeing 787-8. It will compete directly with AirAsia X, Japan Airlines and Malaysia Airlines on the route, with indirect competition also coming from AirAsia X through its Tokyo Haneda – Kuala Lumpur link.
The carrier will end its flights on January 25, 2015 as difficult trading conditions between Malaysia and Australia and particularly price competition from Malaysia Airlines over the last year have made it unprofitable.
The news came after the low-cost carrier’s chief executive, Tony Fernandes, revealed the intent to resume the popular route via the social networking site, Twitter.
At Routesonline we’ve decided to take a look back at a breaking article from the same time last year and revisit it 12 months later to see what’s happened since we released the news.
BA will utilise a four-class Boeing 777-200ER on the route configured with 12 seats in First, 48 in Club World, 32 in World Traveller Plus and a further 127 in World Traveller. Its return to the city pair will boost capacity on the route by 22.2 per cent with weekly seats increasing to 8,449 in each direction.
Since its debut, AirAsia X has carried over one million passengers to and from its Japan routes and Japan contributes over 12 per cent of the airline’s total revenue to date. The airline is committed to Japan and the additional flight frequency to Narita is in line with its expansion strategy for the region, says the carrier.
The new Air Asia X service to XiÁn’s Xianyang International Airport was launched on July 2, 2014 and represents its fifth link into China after Hangzhou, Chengdu, Beijing, and Shanghai. The low-cost carrier is offering four flights per week on the route, the only airline providing direct flights between the city and Kuala Lumpur.
flynas has inaugurated its new long-haul network as it adds a new dimension to its flight offering. The carrier, which describes itself as Low-Cost Carrier Plus, offering customers added value, has wet-leased Airbus A330-200s from ACMI provider HiFly.
