Wednesday, Jan 13, 2016
Dubai: Malaysia Airlines is dropping its daily flight to Dubai from Kuala Lumpur as part of its new code-share agreement with Emirates, one of the world’s largest airlines, announced last month.
The airline will instead place its code-share on Emirates’ existing four daily flights between the two cities, according to a statement posted on Malaysia Airlines website on Wednesday.
Malaysia Airlines passengers will still be able to book through the airline on flights to Dubai, however, the services will only be operated by Emirates from February 15, when the new agreement starts. It also sees Malaysian Airlines place its code-share on Emirates flights to Europe and Emirates place its on Malaysia Airlines services to destinations in Asia Pacific.
The agreement is part of Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Christoph Mueller’s plans to turn around the struggling airline that has not made a profit since 2011 and saw its aircraft involved in two disasters in 2014.
Mueller, appointed last year, said in Wednesday’s statement the arrangement with Emirates “will offer guests a wider network of destinations at greater convenience.”
Brendan Sobie, Chief Analyst at CAPA — Centre for Aviation, told Gulf News by email it is “not too surprising” Malaysia Airlines is cutting flights to Dubai.
Critical
The airline is short of capacity after phasing out Boeing 777 aircraft and operating a once daily, smaller Airbus A330 against Emirates larger daily Airbus A380 and three daily 777 service would have made the partnership difficult to manage, he said.
“I see this code-share as critical for MAS (Malaysia Airlines) as they need a presence outside Asia Pacific and there is no bigger potential partner in terms of global network scale than Emirates.”
Emirates did not comment on Wednesday’s announcement that also confirmed the two airlines will align their frequent flyer programmes. The code-share agreement is expected to direct more South East Asian passengers onto Emirates through Malaysia Airlines Kuala Lumpur hub.
Sobie said it is unclear how many passengers Emirates will be able to gain from the code-share but “there’s certainly no harm trying and for MAS [Malaysian Airlines] it could help them turn around.
In June 2015, Mueller said the airline was “technically bankrupt” and was have making 6,000 out of its 20,000 staff redundant and selling two of its A380s to trim on costs.
In 2014, one of its aircraft flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down over eastern Ukraine. Earlier that year, another one of its aircraft flying to Beijing disappeared and is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean.
By Alexander Cornwell Staff Reporter
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