MASwings' refurbished ATR 72-500 fleet to kick off Negaraku livery Dec 10
KOTA KINABALU: MASwings' refreshed ATR 72-500 fleet will kick off its Negaraku livery on December 10, 2017 and will be fully released by first quarter of 2018, announced MASwings acting CEO, Datuk Captain Mohd Azlan Mahmood.
Captain Azlan said that the move to improve all the airline's 10 ATRs costs RM3 million and included another livery with the Sarawak emblem.
“Upon completion, the total cabin refurbishment would actually touch on the passengers' seats, cushion covers, carpets, curtains and crew seats,” he said at an exclusive media sneak peak of its new ATR 72-500 look at the Kota Kinabalu International Airport (KKIA) here yesterday.
“The three major items that we are looking for or we are going to do is actually to improve our reputation and win back customers, which means improving on our On Time Performance (OTP), reduce the delays and cancellations, and also focus on the new mantra - young, fresh and speed - to renew the customer experience. The fleet renewal improvement program also includes the focus on the safety technical liability readiness for the rural air service.
“Today's initiative actually includes deep cleaning for the interior and exterior of the aircraft, engaging other third parties to do the overall aircraft cleaning, seat covers, cushions replacement. All this were done during the period of heavy maintenance of the aircraft, which is ongoing presently now,” he added.
Captain Azlan said MASwings will focus in 2018 on improving its customer experience, which is dependent on the imminent renewal of the Rural Air Services (RAS) Agreement that will expire by the year end.
According to him, details of the new agreement have not been finalized as discussions between the airline and Transport Ministry are still ongoing.
MASwings chief commercial officer (COO) Shauqi Ahmad who was also present, disclosed that the people of Sabah and Sarawak appear to be happy with the present MASwings' performance despite the flights reduction to implement the airline's fleet improvement program.
He said so far MASwings had managed to reduce the number of flight cancellations, which is also dependent on other factors like weather and other challenging situations.
“I think we can see there are very minimal cancellations. I can guarantee our OTP (On Time Performance) is very high now. On certain days, we are touching 100%, which in other words means there was no cancellation and no re-timing on that particular date,” said the COO.
“Our rate or percentage is hovering around 96% to 100% every day. As you can see, there are not so many complaints that we have received so far.
“This is part and parcel of the fleet improvement program. We managed to bring reliability to the highest standard and as a result of it, we do less cancellations. People in Sabah and Sarawak are very happy with our performance now,” he emphasized.
Shauqi said this year's average load factor had so far hit the MASwings target of 60% to 61% for both of its ATR and Twin Otter fleets.
“For comparison last year, we registered around 1.4 million passengers on MASwings and this year we expect around 1.25 or 1.3 million, which is proportionate with the number of people living in Sabah and Sarawak.
“We service 5.5 million in population. I think we have covered a significant part of people living in Sabah and Sarawak,” he added.