KUCHING, March 24: The Ministry of Transport and State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) is ready to approve special flights from Kuching and Miri to send Sarawakian students back to campuses in Sabah for the new academic term that will begin in April.
Transport Minister Datuk Lee Kim Shin thus advised Sarawakian students planning to return to campuses in Sabah to book their flights in advance.
He emphasised that this is to facilitate airlines in applying for approval from SDMC to operate special flights to Kota Kinabalu from Kuching and Miri in order to meet the demand.
“Recently, we have also received requests from Sarawakian students who are studying in Sabah to have flights from Kuching to Kota Kinabalu and Miri to Kota Kinabalu.
“Base on the requests received, we have liased with Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, Malindo and MasWings to consider operating special flights from Kuching and Miri to Kota Kinabalu to meet the demand from our students,” he disclosed in a press statement today.
As such, Lee advised students to contact the airlines directly to book their flight tickets so that the airlines can in turn apply for approval to run these special flights from SDMC to the required destinations.
“We hope this approach will be able to help our students to return to their campuses and resume their new semester timely (sic), which will begin their (sic) fourth week of class conducted physically starting April 5,” he said.
Meanwhile, Lee disclosed that SDMC has also approved AirAsia’s requests to operate ferry flights (without passengers) from Kota Kinabalu to Miri and commercial passenger flights from Miri to Kota Kinabalu on April 1 and 10.
AirAsia will also operate ferry flights from Kota Kinabalu to Kuching and commercial passenger flights from Kuching to Kota Kinabalu on April 2 and 9.
Additionally, on April 2, AirAsia will also operate a ferry flight from Johor Bahru to Kuching and a commercial passengers flight from Kuching to Johor Bahru. — DayakDaily
