India top market for Malaysia Air, eyeing non-metros: Group MD

MUMBAI: India has emerged as the single biggest market for Malaysia Airlines Berhad and the carrier has added capacity in this market by pulling out its flights from the Asean and domestic networks. Currently operating 77 weekly flights to 10 cities in India, the airline has flown 13 lakh people in & out of the country in the first half of this calendar year. It will raise the frequency to 80 weekly flights this Dec and then add more next year.“India is the top market for us in terms of both revenue and passenger numbers among the 24 countries and 67 territories that we fly to. Australia and Europe are the second and third biggest markets for us after India,” Izham bin Ismail, group MD of Malaysia Aviation Group Berhad, told TOI.With the flying rights to metros exhausted under the existing India-Malaysia bilaterals, the airline plans to add flights to the non metros here next year as it sees a lot of traffic potential from there too. “India is a very important market to us. And we intend to grow (in) India in the future. We are evaluating other non-metro cities where we could deploy. We have also been increasing frequency on some India routes. We have a code share with IndiGo that helps passengers connect to their domestic network,” Ismail, who had joined the airline as a pilot in 1979, and then rose through the ranks, said.He sees India as a “very promising” market with travel demands from all quarters like leisure, premium and visiting friends and relatives. “The Indian economy is growing at a truly impressive pace. Urbanisation here is on the rise. Indian carriers have over 2,000 aircraft on order. Middle class income here is growing. We see the Indian population predominantly has very stable disposable income,” he said.“So, we put more capacity into India by sacrificing our capacity into Asean & domestic Malaysia. We redirected those capacities to India. I am glad we took a bet on India at the right time,” he said.