Trichy, December 21 – Malaysia-Indonesia (Malindo) Air on Friday officially announced that it would be operating a daily service on the Trichy-Kuala Lumpur sector from January 2. However, the inaugural flight of Malindo air to India would be between Kuala Lumpur and New Delhi that is scheduled to take off on December 30 this year, said Chandran Ramamurthy, the chief executive officer of Malindo air at Trichy.
With the introduction of Malindo air, the number of direct services between Trichy and Kuala Lumpur will be raised to 33 a week. At present, Air Asia, the first low-cost airliner in the region,operates three services a day and Air India Express operates five services a week to Kuala Lumpur via Chennai.
The new airline plans to fly to Ahmedabad from January 27 and to Mumbai from February 15. Ahmedabad comes first on its map ahead of Mumbai because the airline was asked to wait for at least one month after the proposed inauguration of the long-awaited Navi Mumbai airport is now scheduled to be inaugurated in the in the middle of January, said Ramamurthy.
Madurai would be added in its map sooner than later, Ramamurthy added.
The airline is luring passengers with inaugural offer of Rs 10,000 for a round trip ticket on the Kuala Lumpur-Trichy sector, though the offer is restricted to eight seats per flight on the economy class. Talking about the facilities offered, Ramamurthy said the seating arrangements had a convenient leg space of 45 inches and 35 kg baggage would be allowed in the brand new Boeing 737-900 aircraft. “We are planning to operate to Madurai, Cochin, Chennai, Pune and Amritsar subject to availability of aircraft and permission from our own Malindo air,” the CEO of the less-than-one-year-old airline said.
The airline expects to fly around three lakh passengers between India and Malaysia through the Malaysia government’s ‘Visit Malaysia’ booster campaign that underlined the value of importance of tourism, trade, and age-old business links between the two countries, said Raja Sa’adi bin Raja Amrin, director of Malaysian Tourism in Chennai, who was present at the meet.
