KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 24): Malaysia Airlines will suspend its Kuala Lumpur-Brisbane route from March 27, 2023 as part of its ongoing business review.
"The last flight on this route will depart Brisbane to Kuala Lumpur on March 26, 2023 via MH134," it said in a statement on Thursday (Nov 24).
"Operations on non-stop flights between Kuala Lumpur to four other existing Australian destinations, namely Adelaide, Sydney, Perth, and Melbourne, will continue without change, providing up to 43 direct services a week between Australia and Malaysia."
According to the carrier, customers travelling to Brisbane can leverage its codeshare and oneworld partner, Qantas, and connect from Sydney and Melbourne to Brisbane after the suspension.
“After a thorough business review, we have made a difficult decision to suspend our operations into Brisbane to ensure we operate and utilise our fleet at an optimum level, as well as maximising revenue on every route we fly to, while facing strong headwinds from the continued increase in fuel cost, forex and interest rate," said Malaysia Airlines Bhd group chief executive officer Captain Izham Ismail.
"Our forward booking to other Australian cities is very encouraging with strong demand up to and beyond the first quarter of 2023, with forward bookings significantly ahead of the same period in 2019.
"We remain focused on ramping up our network to achieve full recovery by 2024. To date, we have deployed capacities at 76% year-to-date and anticipate ending the year with 82% capacity of pre-pandemic level network-wide but Australia has rebounded quicker, and excluding the suspension of Brisbane, Malaysia Airlines’ Australia network will be at 98% capacity of pre-pandemic levels by March 2023.
"This year we added new destinations from Kuala Lumpur to Doha, Haneda and Yogyakarta as well as from Kota Kinabalu to Singapore, and will continue to explore markets that spur economic growth for the country, whilst helping business and trade.
"We remain steadfast in our long-term goals of driving growth in every aspect of our business for market relevance," he said.