Air Asia X announces ticket sales ahead of April 2012 KL-SYD

[Lee G]

Malaysia Star, KL, 12January12

AirAsia X to start KL-Sydney route
By B.K. SIDHU
bksidhu@thestar.com.my

It’s finalising whether to exit from Indian, European and Christchurch services

PETALING JAYA: AirAsia X (AAX) seems all set to start ticket sales for the much-awaited KL-Sydney route next week and will begin mounting flights to the Australian city by April this year, way ahead of rival Scoot.

The airline is also said to be in the final stages of rationalising its route network where it would cut some routes which it deemed to be unprofitable and add Sydney and some routes to China (provided it can get slots there) to its network.

“We want to do that (Sydney) well ahead of the competition,'' said a senior official of the airline group.

Scoot is Singapore Airlines' long-haul low-cost carrier that has named Sydney as the first city of call out of Singapore and plans to begin flying the route by mid-year.
Competitive: AirAsia X offers reasonable rates for its Melbourne, Perth and Gold Coast flights/

The official declined to elaborate, but market has it that AAX will begin selling tickets for the sector next Tuesday and a team is planning to launch the sales from Sydney.

The first flight is slated to take off on April 1. However, all is subject to its internal planning, though the airline may be looking at daily flights for the KL-Sydney sector.

This puts an end to the near three-year wait and a bitter fight with Malaysia Airlines (MAS) over the route. MAS had previously lobbied against competition and the national carrier is still the only airline serving the KL-Sydney route after Jetstar withdrew from the sector in 2009.

This sharing of routes has been made possible after a share-swap agreement between AAX's sister company AirAsia and MAS on Aug 8 last year and both will collaborate rather than compete.

Currently, MAS flies twice daily from KL to Sydney and whether MAS will reduce the frequency to once daily and make way for AAX to take on the other slot is unclear.

“Choices and reasonable fares are what a traveller wants. But the biggest fear for travellers over the collaboration is the lack of competition and that is seen by the fare pricing for the Dehli/Mumbai sectors where the fares offered by AAX are somewhat close to that offered by MAS,'' said an industry source.

To be fair, AAX does offer reasonable rates for its Melbourne, Perth and Gold Coast flights and if the booking is made in advance, the savings can be up to 40% of the full-service fares. The airline is currently offering a 20% discount on its base fares for all its routes for a limited period.

Asked on the strategy for the KL-Sydney route, the official said:“We would offer lots of low fares and as we are already well known in Australia it should be (fairly easy to fill up our aircraft).''

Interestingly, those in the know claim that AAX is close to finalising details on whether to exit from the Indian (New Dehli, Mumbai), European (London and Paris) and Christchurch routes.

Sources said both MAS and AAX had had several meetings over the matter so that MAS could take over all the slots from AAX for the routes and carry AAX passengers that have booked seats with the airline.

The date for axing the route is said to be as early as February. AAX has, however, repeatedly said that “no decision on routes, whether to add new ones or cancel new ones'' had been made.

But those in the know claim that “all this adding and axing of routes is part of the understanding under the collaboration.'' Looking from the collaboration perspective, moving out of the European/India/Christchurch routes is seen as a compromise to get Sydney and some China routes.

MAS CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya in his executive summary of his business plan said that “we are close to finalising a connecting-service that will enable passengers on either airline to seamlessly connect between carriers and non-overlapping routes.”

Separately on Tuesday, AirAsia boss Tan Sri Tony Fernandes tweeted: “With all that's going on, we will need to get more planes. I will be speaking to the board. The growth in the low-cost arena is very exciting.''

Last Friday he was quoted in Paris as saying: “AirAsia will consider buying up to 25 Airbus A320 aircraft. Our growth will probably exceed the aircraft that we have right now, and the initial public offerings of AirAsia's units in Thailand and Indonesia will give us the ability to probably take more aircraft.''

[David C]

Obviously none of the route claims are substantiated . There are are few " said to be " and " those in the know " referred to in the text . Like many aviation related news scoops , history shows that many never materialize ..I would think that Air Asia introducing SYD-KUL but at the same time dropping KUL to LGW and CDG would be counter productive concidering the added traffic that the Olympics may generate . SYD to Europe in general is a big earner , why would Air Asia not want a share of that , just ask Emirates and Etihad . Time will tell , very interesting times ahead I feel ...

Dave C

[Anthony T]

Hi there

Air Asia Sydney schedules :

D7222 KUL2345-SYD0945+1 332 D eff 01APR12-
D7223 SYD1055-KUL1725 332 D eff 02APR12-

Fares on sale from 1400 EST today :
from $99 Economy
&
from $499 Premium
both one way.

[Bernie P]

AN AIRFARE war is set to break out on flights to Asia following the announcement budget carrier AirAsia X will begin flying from Sydney to Malaysia.

The airline is offering introductory flights to Kuala Lumpur from April from $99 one way, on to Bali from $159 and Phuket in Thailand from $139.

It follows Singapore Airline's budget offshoot Scoot's announcement last month that it would begin flying from Sydney to Singapore to July.

The new airlines will make it quicker and cheaper to get to Asia than ever before, with AirAsia X offering links to more than 80 destinations.

AirAsia X already flies to KL from the Gold Coast, Melbourne and Perth and the introduction of flights from Sydney had been highly anticipated.

In late 2010, the airline painted the phrase "Liberate Sydney. End the Monopoly'' on the side of its newest plane.

It had previously been denied permission to fly from Sydney by the Malaysian Government, despite receiving the green light from local authorities, because it wanted to protect its national carrier from aggressive new price competition.

Last week when AirAsiaX announced it would suspend flights to Europe and India this year in a bid to concentrate on core markets of Australasia, China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea.

AirAsia group CEO and AirAsia X director Tan Sri Tony Fernandes said the new route would also be good for Sydney tourism.

Destination NSW, Tourism Australia and AirAsia X will be investing in a two-year marketing and promotion campaign.

The route will be operated on the Airbus A330-300 aircraft with a configuration of 12 Premium fly flatbed seats and 365 Economy seats.

AirAsia's affiliate Indonesia AirAsia also flies daily flights to Bali from Perth and four times weekly from Darwin.

AirAsia X was named the world's best low cost airline in the annual World Airline Survey by Skytrax for the past three years.

The sale fares are available until sold out for online bookings from 2pm EST today until January 22 for travel from April 2 until October 27.

The fares are subject to availability and not available on all flights/days or at peak periods and other conditions apply.

Source: news.com.au

[Anthony T]

Hi there

Tickets now available $7 fare + $92 Tax = $99