Following the success of its four new routes between Indonesia and Singapore, AirAsia is now looking to add more routes to the island-city in 2009, said its Group CEO Tony Fernandes.
Inaugural flights between Singapore and the Indonesian cities of Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta and Bali took off on 24 March 2009, recording forward bookings of 80,000 so far. AirAsia is the only airline flying the Singapore–Bandung route and is the first low-fare airline to service the Singapore–Yogyakarta sector.
AirAsia’s first route between Indonesia and Singapore was from Pekanbaru, which opened in August last year.
Apart from Indonesia, AirAsia currently flies between Singapore and the Malaysian cities of Kuala Lumpur (7 daily flights), Kuching (1) and Kota Kinabalu (1), as well as Bangkok (4) and Phuket (1) in Thailand. These bring AirAsia’s total number of weekly flights to and from Singapore to 140.
“Singapore is very special to AirAsia and we consider it a virtual hub. AirAsia’s latest Indonesia–Singapore link forms the final piece of our network jigsaw puzzle as it resembles the importance of the AirAsia network, making it the most powerful in Asia. Currently, we have a combined total of 10 routes connecting Singapore and we are looking to introduce at least three more new routes this year. Based on our projections, we will carry a total of 2 million guests to and from Singapore in 2009,” reported Fernandes.
AirAsia is considering a number of cities to be linked to Singapore and among the destinations in the pipeline are Penang and Langkawi in Malaysia, as well as Medan and Surabaya in Indonesia. AirAsia will also increase the frequencies of some of the existing routes to Singapore this year.
Photo: The Ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia to Singapore Mr. Wardhana (centre) in a group photo with AirAsia Group CEO Dato' Sri Tony Fernandes (5th from left), AirAsia deputy Group CEO Dato' Kamarudin Meranun (4th left), Indonesia AirAsia CEO Mr Dharmadi (5th from right), Thailand AirAsia CEO Tassapon Bijleveld (4th right) and AirAsia flight attendants.
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