Firefly to have two KL-KK daily flights from Jan 15

5 January 2011

SEPANG: Firefly, Malaysia’s first community airline, will begin its operations on Jan. 15, from the Main Terminal Building of KLIA to Kota Kinabalu and Kuching twice daily, and from Jan. 24, three times daily and four times daily respectively.

Firefly’s Managing Director, Dato’ Eddy Leong said this to reporters after unveiling its latest sales counter at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) here yesterday.

Also present was Datuk Azmi Murad, senior general manager (operations services) of Malaysia Airports.

Leong said opening the ticketing counter at KLIA was a natural progression from the decision to base its new Boeing 737-800 operations at the award-winning airport.

“Firefly’s operation in KLIA will focus on offering unbeatable value at lowest fares.

“We will beat our competitors hands down with our low fares,” he said.

“This is made possible with our decision to use the Boeing 737-800 aircraft, with a capacity of 189 seats, which has allowed us to achieve one of the lowest cost of available seat per kilometre (CASK) among our competitors,” Leong said.

“One of the key features of the B737-800 operations is that passengers can enjoy even greater savings with the Standard and Premium sets of services that let them buy several add-on services at low prices.

“For example, the Standard set comprises an in-flight-meal, bottle of mineral water, 15+5kg of checked baggage allowance and Preferred Seat selection, and costs RM38 only, which is 40 per cent lower than if the add-on services were bought individually,” he added.

“We also have the advantage of leveraging on our parent company Malaysia Airlines’ infrastructure such as maintenance engineers and ground handling operations to keep costs low,” he said.

Meanwhile, Leong also said that Firefly planned to expand its services in Asean in the third quarter of next year.“Obviously, Asean will be the main focus for us and we are looking at it very carefully.

“We are now going through slot approvals,” he said. However, he was unable to reveal the specific cities Firefly planned to fly to.

He said passenger growth at the Skypark Terminal in Subang was expected to surpass two million this year. Last year, passenger growth was 1.5 million.

“This is going to be an interesting year for us. We can see clear signs of economic recovery and strong demand,” he said.

Firefly’s new airport ticketing counter opens from 8.30am to 5.30pm and sells tickets for all Firefly routes, add-on products such as in-flight meals, check-in baggage allowances and standard and premium sets of services.

Leong said the opening hours would be revised to 5.30am to 10pm from Jan 15.

To date, Firefly has 21 airport ticketing offices and plans to open another six this year. The latest all-in fare promotion for the East Malaysian routes is RM59 one way for the travel period between Jan. 17 and May 15, 2011. Booking period will end on Jan. 16, 2011.