Malaysia Airlines Switches Domestic Route to Firefly

Malaysia Airlines is to suspend its Kuala Lumpur – Sibu route from August 1, but services will be maintained through its wholly-owned, subsidiary Firefly. Malaysia Airlines currently offers a twice daily service on the route.

An estimated 428,000 O&D passengers travelled between the two destinations in the past year, a market dominated by budget carrier AirAsia. Malaysia Airlines carried around 26 per cent of this traffic and will hope to compete more effectively through the subsidiary operation which has a much lower cost structure.

The transfer will take place over a month long period from July 1 when Firefly will make its debut on the route. The carrier will offer a twice daily service and at the same time Malaysia Airlines will drop to just a single daily rotation before suspending its own flights on August 1. It will maintain its activity on the route through a codeshare with its subsidiary.

"We have an agreement with our code share partner, Malaysia Airlines that we would operate this route utilising our Boeing 737-800 aircraft and will continue to provide connectivity to other Malaysia Airlines routes and services,” said Eddy Leong, Managing Director, Firefly. "We also took into account the needs of business and leisure travellers and scheduled our flights timings accordingly."

This will be only the third destination that Firefly serves from Kuala Lumpur International Airport; it also has a six times daily link to Kota Kinabalu and a seven times daily connection to Kuching, with both routes also being flown by Malaysia Airlines.

As the table above illustrates, Kuala Lumpur is a key market for Firefly as its main hub is at Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport in Subang, Selangor, the former gateway to the Malaysian capital, where it operates over 250 weekly turboprop links to 12 destinations. It also has a hub at Penang International Airport and plans to develop its operations from other regional centres.