KUALA LUMPUR: MyAirline is set to take off very soon with the sale of its flight tickets to be launched within weeks as the airline has finally received the green light to start operating.
The airline, which is Malaysia's second low-cost carrier (LCC), was given the air service licence (ASL) by the Malaysian Aviation Commission (Mavcom) on Nov 15 this year.
In an interview with the New Straits Times recently, MyAirline's chief executive officer (CEO) Rayner Teo said the next step for the carrier was to apply for domestic air traffic rights and once the application was approved, it would start flying within Malaysia.
"We're hoping to start flying before the end of this year. We're looking at domestic destinations within the Peninsula (Malaysia)," he said, while hinting that Penang would likely be the first destination that the airline would fly to.
Currently, MyAirline has 330 staff and the number is increasing fast.
The budget carrier will kickstart its operations with three narrow-body Airbus A320 aircraft from Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 (klia2).
With a utilisation of up to 13 hours per aircraft, the airline could operate a number of local destinations with high flight frequency.
Teo said currently the airline's fourth A320 aircraft was being painted and in the next five years, and its target within the next five years was to operate 50 aircraft.
"We're an LCC and one of the fundamentals of an LCC is to keep a single-family type (of aircraft) and also keeping to a narrow-body fleet. We've opted for the Airbus family of the 320 narrow-body aircraft and we felt that that was the best aircraft for us," he added.
All of its aircraft are currently under lease and according to Teo, the Covid-19 pandemic had given the airline the advantage of negotiating on the lease in its favour.
He also said that starting an airline during the pandemic was a plus point for MyAirline as the budget carrier was able to observe and learn from its competitors and offer a better service instead.
"A lot of feedback that we hear is that it's very difficult to reach the party (airline) after you purchased a flight ticket. For us, we'll ensure that our passengers will be able to communicate with us effectively."
"We won't be looking at chat bots but we'll have human interaction instead. On-time performance is also something that we'll be focused on.
"If we say we're going to operate at 7AM, then we'll make sure that we depart on a timely basis," Teo, who has nearly 16 years of experience in the budget airline business, said.
When asked why MyAirline chose red as its corporate colour, similar to its rival in Malaysia, Teo said his team had gone through many other colours but the most eye-catching for them was red.
He added that many other successful international brands had red as their corporate colour and it should not deter the airline from using the same colour as its competitor.
"We shouldn't be restricted by the fact that somebody else is using that colour. Every other colour was pretty boring to us," Teo said.