By Nur Ashikin Louis
KUCHING, March 24: MYAirline, Malaysia’s second low cost airline is conducting a study on the possibility of providing a Kuching to Miri route.
MYAirline chief executive Rayner Teo said the route was proposed by Sarawak Minister of Transport Dato Sri Lee Kim Shin via phone call two weeks ago.
“We have been also receiving quite a lot of pressure from your Sarawak Transport Minister Dato Sri Lee to do more flights.
“Based on my discussion on the phone with him about two weeks ago, he has asked me to seriously consider mounting Kuching to Miri flights. He said the fares are too high and sometimes even with the fares, (passengers) cannot get the seats.
“So we have spoken with him and we said that we will do a study and we will be looking at that. Hopefully it will come soon but it is tied to the fact based on our (availability) of our planes,” he said during MYAirline’s roundtable with the media at Pullman Hotel here today.
When asked whether such proposal could be realised, Teo gave a positive response considering that “the data we see before, and during or after Covid-19 shows that there’s a lot of movement happening today”.
“Even though we have not completed the study yet, if you ask me now, I believe strongly that the (Kuching and Miri) route will happen for us but it is just a matter of which aircraft are we able to put it in.
“(This is) because the next focus area for us, after the (domestic) routes that we have today, is basically to look at regional. So our team are now busy travelling to Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam as we are hoping to launch our two international routes by early April,” he added.
MYAirline commenced operation on Dec 1, 2022, with Kuching as one of its first three destinations.
To date, MYAirline has 21 flights per week between Kuala Lumpur and Kuching, 14 flights per week between Kuala Lumpur and Miri, and seven flights per week between Kuala Lumpur and Sibu.
The number of flights between Kuala Lumpur and Sibu were recently reduced from 14 flights per week due to a difficulty in filling up the aircraft. — DayakDaily
