KUALA LUMPUR: Dubai-based Emirates views Malaysia as a key market for the airline to tap into the feeder traffic from Southeast Asia as it looks to expand and strengthen its network in the region.
Emirates deputy president and chief commercial officer Adnan Kazim said the feeder opportunity from Malaysia especially in the summer has been strong and the traffic that comes from the country mostly travels to Europe and the United States besides Dubai and the Gulf countries.
"Malaysia has always been an important market for Emirates, particularly with the kind of feeder opportunity that Malaysia has to offer with a lot of flexibility around the visa and the attraction for tourists to visit."
"Malaysia was always designed to be a very important market for our Middle East and Gulf traffic and even beyond that into parts of Africa and Europe. We believe this market has a lot to offer," Adnan told Business Times in an interview at the 80th International Air Transport Association (IATA) annual general meeting and World Air Transport Summit 2024 recently.
Adnan said the collaboration that Emirates has with its sister airline, flydubai for the Malaysian market has been fruitful in terms of driving passenger traffic from Dubai to Malaysia and vice versa.
He said Emirates' strategy is to tap into the medium-to-large sized markets such as Kuala Lumpur while flydubai focuses on entering smaller markets such as Penang and Langkawi.
"We work around the cooperation in terms of how to feed (the passenger traffic) from core airports, like Kuala Lumpur in this case, into many other islands such as Penang, Langkawi and others."
"With the complement coming from flydubai, definitely that brings more (passenger traffic) flow and more opportunities," Adnan added.
Currently, Emirates is flying to Kuala Lumpur from Dubai using its Airbus A380 and B777-300ER (extended range) aircraft while flydubai has been flying to Penang and Langkawi since Feb this year using its Boeing B737 MAX aircraft.
Speaking on Emirates' expansion plan in Southeast Asia, Adnan said the airline is looking to operate in more secondary markets and tap into new routes in the region once it receives and operates more A350 airplanes.
"As we get more A350s gradually we'll ramp up and enter into many secondary airports and Asia. We'll definitely consider it. The region has a lot to offer," he said, adding that Emirates' first A350 aircraft will enter into service in Sept this year.
Emirates has a total order of 65 A350-900s. The airline is expecting to operate 10 new A350s in its fleet by March 31, 2025.
These 10 A350s will offer three cabin classes, which include 32 next generation Business Class seats, 21 seats in Premium Economy and 259 Economy Class seats.
Last month, Emirates announced nine destinations where its A350 will be flying to. These included Bahrain as the inaugural flight for its first A350 from Sept15 as well as Kuwait and Muscat.
The airline will also operate its A350 to Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Colombo as well as Lyon, Bologna and Edinburgh.
Adnan said the A350 is a game changer for Emirates as the aircraft enables the carrier to serve regional points across the Middle East and the Gulf Cooperation Council, West Asia and Europe.
"With the latest generation cabin products including more of our sought-after Premium Economy to more cities, top-notch in-flight entertainment technologies and an abundance of other customer-friendly features, the Emirates A350 builds on our long-standing commitment of investing in the very best customer experience in the sky," he said.