Malaysia Airlines to increase services in Indonesia.

Date: 14 December 2012

Malaysia Airlines to increase services in Indonesia.

Kuala Lumpur-based full-service carrier Malaysia Airlines (MAS) plans to increase its services to more Indonesian destinations in the future in order to tap into the growing demand from the country’s business and leisure travelers. The airline’s regional senior vice president for Malaysia and ASEAN Muzammil Mohammad said that they were looking at cities like Semarang, Central Java; Surabaya, East Java; Balikpapan, East Kalimantan and Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara for the new services.

“They are important points in Indonesia and with a population of 250 million people, Indonesia is a great market. We are looking at the market, and whenever it is feasible, we are going to introduce the new services,” he said on the sidelines of “Celebrating 40 Years of Malaysian Hospitality with You” at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.

Muzammil said that they were set to increase the Jakarta–Kuala Lumpur frequency from six to seven times daily starting on Dec. 15. The new frequency was an answer to the strong demand from customers from both nations, especially from businesspeople, he said.  “Jakarta has always been an important point for us since we opened the route 40 years ago, as well as Medan [North Sumatra] and Denpasar [Bali],” he added.

The airline currently flies twice a day and three times a day, respectively, to Medan and Denpasar. As the demand to and from Medan was increasing, he said that they had recently changed the aircraft serving the route, from a Boeing 737-400 to a 737-800 Next Generation (NG), which is designed to carry between 162 and 189 passengers.

Malaysia Airlines used to fly to Surabaya, but they had to drop the city from their network earlier this year as the carrier has struggled to stay in the black in recent years. “But, it does not mean that we do not intend to get back to Surabaya. We do not know when we can resume our flights [to Surabaya], but we continually monitor the situation,” Muzammil said.

Meanwhile, the airline’s Indonesia area manager Roslan Ismail said that they would spend more on marketing in Indonesia to better tap the growth of air transportation demand in the country. He said that they were not afraid of competition from the major low-cost carriers in either country, Air-Asia and Lion Air, or the national flag carrier Garuda Indonesia “We have our strategy and a great team. We are going to be more aggressive in the Indonesian market next year,” Roslan said.

Recently, Emirates Airlines also announced their expansion in Indonesia, increasing their Jakarta–Dubai nonstop service to three times daily beginning on March 1, 2013. Currently, the Gulf carrier flies twice daily to the capital city. “Due to the strong demand we are experiencing, Emirates has added much-needed seat capacity on its flights to Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Manila. The extra daily flights will increase capacity on the Jakarta and Manila routes by 50 percent,” said Salem Obaidalla, Emirates’ senior vice president for commercial operations for the Far East and Australia, as quoted by Asia News Network.

Nurfika Osman, The Jakarta Post

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