KUCHING, March 17: Ministry of Transport (MOT) Sarawak will be meeting with airline companies soon to discuss increasing flight frequencies into and within Sarawak and keeping airfares reasonable, especially during the school holidays and festive seasons.
Minister Dato Sri Lee Kim Shin has urged airliners to play their role in balancing their commercial interest and that of the people to make air transport affordable.
“The Ministry requests for airliners to play their pivotal role to the people and government by offering more flight frequencies into and within Sarawak to ensure sufficient seats are available and maintain reasonable airfares,” he said in a statement today.
On the recent public complaint on MASWings charging high airfare from Miri to Kuching, Lee said the Malaysian Aviation Commission (Mavcom) explained that MASWings does not adopt a dynamic pricing mechanism.
“The price is set at a certain ceiling due to public service obligation as the Federal government is subsidising the fare,” he informed.
As for March 14’s incident involving MYAirline’s direct flight between Miri and Kuala Lumpur, which had to return to base twice due to technical problems, Lee said he was made to understand that MYAirline had arranged for a rescue aircraft to fly 77 passengers out to Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) 2 at 10.34pm.
“According to MYAirline chief executive officer (CEO) Rayner Teoh, the airline had served two meals at 3.21pm for lunch and 8.30pm for dinner to all the passengers.
“In addition, 30 passengers were flown via Malaysia Airlines to Kuala Lumpur, and three passengers were provided stay in Miri and took the next day flight,” he explained. — DayakDaily
