The Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister Dato’ Sri Hajah Nancy Binti Shukri personally welcomed passengers aboard the new direct Malaysia Airlines flight upon arrival at Kuala Lumpur International Airport from Doha.
Malaysia Airlines celebrated the arrival of its inaugural direct flight from Kuala Lumpur to Doha via flight MH160 at Hamad International Airport (HIA) marking a milestone in the airline’s international expansion plan and efforts to enable optimal connections to the Middle East, United States, Europe, and Africa.
Upon arrival at Hamad International Airport (HIA), the Official Airport Partner of the upcoming FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ and voted the World Best Airport 2021 by SKYTRAX World Airport Awards, the A330-300 aircraft was welcomed with a water cannon salute, while passengers were given welcoming gifts upon their disembarkation. The event was co-hosted by HIA and Qatar Airways, the airline’s codeshare partner.
“Today marks another milestone for the national airline as we commence our new daily service from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Doha, Qatar,” said Lau Yin May of Malaysia Airlines. “We are delighted to introduce this new service, our third direct flight to the Middle East after Jeddah and Madinah, further providing greater convenience to customers and widening our global footprint for seamless connectivity.”
Malaysia-Middle East Tourism Ties
The new service will continue driving Malaysia’s tourism recovery via this new route and further boost the growth of traffic flow via KLIA, opening up Malaysia more broadly to travellers from other international destinations. The service will provide passengers seamless connectivity via Hamad International Airport, enabling optimal connections to the United States, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, through the airline’s codeshare partnership with Qatar Airways.
The national airline will operate a direct daily flight between Kuala Lumpur International Airport and Hamad International Airport, Doha via MH160 departing KUL- DOH at 9:20 pm and MH161 departing DOH-KUL at 01:30 am. The daily service will be operated with A330-300 aircraft, equipped with 290 seats, comprising 27 seats in Business Class, 16 Economy with extra legroom and 247 seats in Economy Class.
Malaysia has reopened its borders to international tourists starting 1st April 2022. Commenting on the reopening, Dato’ Sri Nancy said, “It is indeed a huge relief for the tourism industry as we welcome more international tourists, newcomers and regulars alike, to further boost our economy. Therefore, we hope for a strong rebound in our market as the border reopening will open doors for the tourism revival to bolster recovery. We are targeting to attract 2 million international tourist arrivals this year with more than RM8.6 billion (AED7.5 billion) in tourism receipts.”
According to Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB), international traffic at its local network of airports increased by 53% after the border reopening on 1 April 2022. Since then, MAHB has been recording an average of 23,000 international passenger movements daily, with numbers peaking above 30,000 during the recent long Hari Raya festive break.
Overall, the airports recorded a total of 642,128 international passenger movements out of which Kota Kinabalu International Airport (BKI), Penang International Airport (PEN) and Langkawi International Airport (LGK) showed the most significant increase by more than 200% respectively when compared to the preceding month. Meanwhile, the Group recorded a total of 2.78 million passengers for Malaysia in April, with domestic passenger movements totalling 2.13 million or 77%.
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