Western Australia has welcomed the arrival of AirAsia Malaysia into the Australian aviation market, with the first flight touching down at Perth Airport on Monday night.
Operated by A321neo aircraft, AirAsia Malaysia’s new daily service between Perth and Kuala Lumpur takes the number of flights on the route to 14 from seven and adds more than 3,000 seats per week on the route.
The new service also adds to sister airline AirAsia X’s daily A330 wide-body service between WA and Malaysia, which provides over 5,200 weekly seats.
AirAsia Aviation Group CEO Bo Lingam said the carrier was excited about its first-ever flights to Australia, a service that will help boost two-way tourism.
“Perth is an incredibly popular destination for our guests for leisure, visiting friends and family, education and due to its close proximity to Southeast Asia – with Malaysia being a top five destination of origin last year,” he remarked.
“Conversely Asia is one of the most popular destinations of choice for West Australians for affordable and unique, culturally diverse travel experiences.
“We are confident these new services operated by AirAsia Malaysia will be popular – our inaugural flight to Perth was 95 per cent full which is a great sign of things to come.
“Thanks to the addition of new model aircraft like the A321neo with longer range capabilities (over five hours) and numerous operational efficiency, we are able to make these new services a reality on a narrowbody aircraft from Kuala Lumpur.”
Lingam also hinted that AirAsia Group could commence flights to Aussie ports it has never serviced.
“With over 300 new specification aircraft on order for the AirAsia Group, we look forward to reviewing more services to Australia in the future including places we have never flown before, which will be announced in due course,” he said.
“With todays’ announcement, this is the most capacity the AirAsia Group including affiliate medium haul airline AirAsia X, has ever had into West Australia which is now the fastest growing destination in Australia with over 15,000 visitor seats flown weekly or nearly 800,000 annually, through Perth Airport.”
Perth Airport Chief Commercial and Aviation Officer Kate Holsgrove said the new service would provide more options for an important tourism and trade link.
“Malaysia is Western Australia’s fourth biggest international visitor market, injecting $99 million into the WA economy in visitor expenditure for the year ending in September 2023,” she stated.
“We’ve got strong business, education, trade and tourism links with Malaysia and this new non-stop service provides further opportunities by adding more than 170,000 new seats annually to the Perth market.
“We look forward to building a strong partnership with AirAsia Malaysia, to ensure the success of this service.”
To mark the new route, AirAsia is discounting Perth-KL tickets by up to 50 per cent, with fares starting from AU$199 one-way, and Perth-Bali/Jakarta tickets, with fares starting from AU$126.
The sale runs until 17 March for travel before 30 November 2024.
Perth push
Perth Airport has been the centre of a lot of airline activity of late, with Vietjet linking WA and Vietnam for the first time late last year, THAI Airways announcing the resumption of its Perth-Bangkok services (restarting on 31 March 2024) and South Africa Airways unveiling the relaunch of Perth-Johannesburg flights (on 28 April 2024).
Qantas is also set to commence the first nonstop flights between Australia and France on 12 July this year.
Last month, AirAsia announced its intention to become the first global budget network carrier, teasing plans to grow its network to Europe, North America and Africa when its new spec aircraft are delivered in the coming years.