AirAsia To Fly Twice Daily From Melbourne And Perth To K.L.

MELBOURNE, April 12 (Bernama) -- AirAsia will operate twice daily services between Melbourne and Kuala Lumpur from July 1 and between Perth and Kuala Lumpur from Aug 1, the airline said Monday. Currently, the budget airline flies daily from Perth and Melbourne to the Malaysian capital. Azran Osman-Rani, chief executive of AirAsia's long-haul offshoot, AirAsia X, said the new flights reflected healthy demand from Australia. "Loads have been consistently strong year-round on all Australian services," he said in a statement. "This has given us the confidence to increase our capacity particularly on Melbourne and Perth routes and as we grow our network and expand heavily to India.

We've been delighted with the response from the travelling public, support from state and national tourism bodies and our airport partners who have really thrown their weight behind these routes and AirAsia as a whole," he said. AirAsia will also boost its Perth-Bali service to 21 flights a week from June 1, up from the current 14. AirAsia currently flies out of three Australian cities -- Melbourne, Perth and Gold Coast. AirAsia hoped to make Sydney the fourth by mid-year and had received the green light from local authorities and had concluded negotiations with the Sydney Airport. But it failed to get approval from the Malaysian government in time for the July 1 start date, forcing the airline to abort plans to fly to Australia's most populous city for now. "At this stage we can't anticipate when approvals for Sydney will be granted," Azran told Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper on April 9. AirAsia said its recently launched flat bed premium seats available between Melbourne and Kuala Lumpur would be progressively added to flights from Gold Coast and Perth this month.