AirAsia X announces more medium-haul flights

AirAsia X is increasing the number of its medium-haul Malaysian flights to 44 per week across 10 routes, while Thai AirAsia X will also be expanding its operations to 22 flights a week across five routes in the next two months.

AirAsia X has recently launched direct services from Kuala Lumpur to South Korea (Seoul-Incheon) and India (New Delhi), and resumed services to Australia (Sydney, Melbourne and Perth), New Zealand (Auckland), and Japan (Tokyo-Haneda and Sapporo-Chitose).

In a statement on Tuesday (Oct 18), the group also confirmed new flights to Saudi Arabia (Jeddah) and Taipei starting November.

Meanwhile, Thai AirAsia X has launched services from Bangkok to Japan (Osaka and Tokyo-Narita) and South Korea (Seoul-Incheon), and is preparing to launch new direct flights to Australia (Melbourne and Sydney) and Japan (Sapporo-Chitose) in early December.

AirAsia X said all furloughed pilots and retrenched cabin crew members will have the opportunity to be back in the sky by December.

“Since the pandemic, AirAsia X has already reactivated 175 pilots and 285 cabin crew members, including rehiring 131 cabin crew members who were retrenched during the pandemic,” it said.

AirAsia X Bhd chief executive officer Benyamin Ismail said the airline currently operates four widebody A330 aircraft, and expects to be operating up to 13 aircraft by the first quarter of 2023 (1Q2023) to meet strong and growing demand for medium-haul flights.

“In December, we will not only be adding more destinations, but also increasing our flight frequencies on popular routes, such as moving to daily services between Kuala Lumpur and Seoul (Incheon), to fly a total of 53 flights weekly.

“Medium-haul air travel is recovering fast, and we intend to leverage this opportunity to drive sustainable growth of AirAsia X, providing consumers with greater value and choice,” he said.

According to Benyamin, the airline has been seeing strong forward bookings for the routes, and will be resuming more services in its core markets, such as Auckland, Melbourne, Perth, Taipei, Tokyo (Haneda) and Sapporo in the next two months.

“Our forward-booking trends remain very encouraging across all key metrics, with higher year-on-year load factors and average fares through 1Q2023.

“We also anticipate strong uptake of our new flights to Istanbul, Türkiye, which will be announced soon, and would like to thank Malaysia Airports for their support and cooperation.

“We look forward to flying to the Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen International Airport in the near future,” Benyamin added.