No take-off for charter airline plan?
Source says A380s to fly to Seoul, Sydney and Melbourne, in addition to London
MALAYSIA Aviation Group (MAG) may change its plan to set up a new charter airline using six Airbus A380s within the next two years under Project Hope.
“There’s no announcement on the plan at the moment. The new airline under Project Hope is supposed to be approved by Khazanah Nasional Bhd by year-end. There are only a few days left to the new year,” sources in the industry told NST Business yesterday.
Khazanah is the sole shareholder of MAG’s subsidiary, Malaysia Airlines Bhd (MAS).
Former MAS chief executive officer (CEO) Peter Bellew had earlier told the media that the project to start a new charter airline to serve the haj and umrah markets using the A380s was expected to receive the green light from Khazanah by the end of the year.
However, NST Business understood
that the superjumbo planes would instead be refurbished with newly upgraded First Class and Business Class cabins.
“The planes would not only be used to serve London route but also Seoul, Sydney and Melbourne from Kuala Lumpur,” said the source.
The six A380s are currently being used by MAS to service the
London-Kuala Lumpur route, the only European route in the airline’s network.
As part of MAS’ recovery plan, the route was supposed to be serviced by the airline’s new longrange wide-body A350 aircraft starting next month.
However, sources said the A350 would now be used to serve the Kuala Lumpur-Tokyo route and other routes in Asia Pacific instead of London as initially planned.
As at press time, MAS has not commented on its future plans when contacted by NST Business.
Bellew had told the media in October that the cost of operating the A350 on the London flights would be about 40 per cent lower compared with the A380.
Bellew has since left MAS to rejoin Ryanair as its chief operating officer.
He was replaced by Captain Izham Ismail as the CEO of the national carrier.