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Malaysia Airlines has high expectations for its operations in India; according to its Group Chief Executive Officer, the goal is to run pre-pandemic levels of flights there by the end of 2023. Flights between India and Malaysia have not had the same level of recovery as those to other locations. Although there is still some ground to cover, hopefully things will have changed by the end of the year.
Returning to pre-pandemic level The airline plans to resume its pre-pandemic level of flights to India by the end of this year, according to Group Chief Executive Officer Izham Ismail. Ismail expressed optimism about India’s promising economic future in an interview with Businessline and discussed how it would give foreign airlines like Malaysia Airlines more clout in the industry. He is quoted in the report as saying,
By the end of this year, we hope to reach nearly 100% capacity in the Indian market. We firmly believe that the CPI index is encouraging given India’s and the GDP’s steady growth.
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Delhi and Mumbai are only two of the many important Indian cities to which Malaysia Airlines offers service. However, there are plans to travel to further locations, including South Indian cities Tiruchirappalli and Thiruvananthapuram.
Gradual expansion
Since last year, when Malaysia Airlines operated 25 weekly flights, the airline has increased its presence in India. It was the ideal time for the carrier to start significantly redeploying its planes to the country, with Malaysia following soon after on April 1st and India opening its borders to foreign tourists on March 27th, 2022.
Ismail stated to Simple Flying last year that the airline was experiencing solid bookings and that the response to the India trips was positive. In order to fulfil these needs, particularly during peak travel times, he discussed assessing the prospects in the Indian market and progressively introducing additional routes, raising frequency, or upgrading aircraft wherever necessary.
In fact, the airline now offers more than 50 weekly flights to India, with stops in Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Kochi among the destinations. Many travellers from India who travel on Malaysian Airlines have ties to other places, including Australia and New Zealand.
potential for more
There is undoubtedly room for more flights between Malaysia and India. James Pearson, a route analyst for Simple Flying, found that five airlines are operating non-stop flights from Kuala Lumpur to India this summer. They have 5,027 departures between them (double for both directions).
But when compared to the same time period in 2019, this is still down by more than 25%. In contrast, there has been far more growth in flights from India to numerous other markets. For instance, Singapore is up 5.5%, the UAE is up 12.9%, and Qatar is up 18.4%. By the end of 2023, Malaysia Airlines’ aims should help the Malaysian market’s statistics.
