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Malaysia Airlines says it is seeing strong demand on its Australian services, with load factors above 90 per cent, as it continues its A330neo (NEO) rollout into the country.
Speaking to Australian Aviation at a press event in Kuala Lumpur, Bryan Foong, CEO of airline business at Malaysia Aviation Group (MAG), said the carrier – which currently has 10 A330-900s in its fleet – is aiming to operate 20 of the next-generation aircraft by 2028.
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The airline currently flies a mix of A330neos and older A330-300s into Australia, and has been aiming to operate all its Australian flights with A330neos. It comes as MAG plans to increase Brisbane services to six flights per week from June and daily from October.
“I think [2028 is] when you’ll have a 100 per cent guarantee you’ll see a NEO on an Australian sector. Today we mix, we prioritise Sydney, Melbourne, some of the key destinations with the NEO, because we see that is where it’s needed. But eventually our aspiration will be completely NEO all the way,” Foong said.
“We love the A330neo – I think we wish we had more sooner, because when we rolled it out into the Australian market, the response and the feedback from our customers has been fantastic. We see it as a strong game changer for us.
“It creates a new impression of Malaysia Airlines compared to what we had before, and so it helps us to build the confidence in the market to say, ‘Hey, you know, we are credible.’ So, we’d love to have more, but it is what it is with Airbus and the delivery streams that they have.”
According to Foong, Malaysia Airlines is “confident” about its Australian connectivity.
“We’ve done a lot of investments expanding the route network in Australia. We now need to expand westwards into London and Paris in particular,” he said.
“Throughout these past few weeks, we’ve launched a couple of extra flights, and I believe we’re going to launch about two more extra flights to London in the coming weeks as well.
“But again, we do this with conscious decision on making sure that good profitability is there as well, so balance that against high fuel costs.”
Malaysia Airlines over the weekend launched three new routes from Kuala Lumpur to Fukuoka, Shenzhen and Changsha, to roll out between July and September this year.
The carrier operates more than 70 flights per week into Australia, including three daily services to Sydney and Melbourne, double daily to Perth, daily to Adelaide, and five times per week to Brisbane. An open skies agreement between Australia and Malaysia came into effect this year.
The writer travelled as a guest of Malaysia Airlines.
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