Saturday, July 09, 2005

AirAsia reveals plans to fly to Brunei Darussalam


By Ignatius Stephen

AirAsia, the region's first "ticketless," no frills, low fare airline is poised to operate into Brunei in about a month, reliable civil aviation sources in Kuala Lumpur told the Weekend yesterday.

A senior Brunei Communications Ministry official confirmed that the ministry has written a letter on the matter. He however declined to elaborate.

AirAsia says that it wishes to fly in direct from Kuala Lumpur.

Frequency of the flights is yet to be determined it is understood, but AirAsia sources confirmed that their government received a letter from Brunei authorities.

Under a bilateral air agreement between the sultanate and Malaysia there is room for scheduled flights by a Malaysian airline to operate flights between the two countries, sources said.

Currently Kuala Lumpur bound travellers going by AirAsia cross the border to Miri or Labuan to catch the connection. It is said to be a tedious and time consuming process. RBA meanwhile operates regular flights to Kuala Lumpur out of Brunei.

Kuala Lumpur based AirAsia, which calls itself the 'affordable airline', was established in December 2001 with two planes flying the following month but it rapidly grew into a force to be reckoned with in the region.

It now has a fleet of 18 Boeing 737-300 and operates internationally to a number of destinations in Thailand, China, Singapore and the Philippines and various points in Malaysia carrying five million passengers since operations in January 2002.

Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin Weekend

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