 "Malindo Air to start India-Kuala Lumpur service")
With this, the airline would squarely take on AirAsia in the fast-growing India-South Asia air travel market.
“We will commence operations between Delhi and Kuala Lumpur from December 30. This would be followed by start of services from Trichy (2 January), Ahmedabad (27 January) and Mumbai (15 February). Overall, we will fly out of eight destinations in India within the next one year,” said Chandran Rama Murthy, chief executive officer, Malindo Air.
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Currently, AirAsia flies directly from Kuala Lumpur to Chennai, Kochi, Kolkata, Trichy and Bangalore while Thai AirAsia flies from Bangkok to Kolkata and Chennai.
Interestingly, Malindo Air has opted to start direct flights from Delhi and Mumbai to Kuala Lumpur – two destinations which were dropped by AirAsia X as part of its network restructuring strategy in early 2012. AirAsia had cited high airport charges at the two metros airports as reasons for the decision.
Murthy, however, said that Malindo Air’s low operational expenses would help the airline to sustain services to the cities despite high airport charges in the cities.
“Airport charges are passed on to the passengers so it does not affect us directly. But as far as operational expenses are concerned, two large components in aircraft lease rentals and maintenance costs are taken care of because of our association with Lion Air”, informed Murthy.
Malindo Air is leasing aircraft at low rentals from Lion Air, which has an order book of 600 aircraft. The new fleet is additionally enabling the carrier to save in maintenance costs, which are expected to remain low for the first seven years of operations, said airline executives.
The airline, which is expecting to close the year with a fleet of 12 aircraft, would add another 15 planes in FY15. Malindo Air would deploy around 350,000 seats between India and Kuala Lumpur in the first year of operations. “We are targeting passenger load factor of around 85%.”, said Murthy.