However, while Best Air will fly five times weekly on the Dhaka-KL route, talks are also progressing with India’s Kingfisher Airlines.
Kingfisher was supposed to fly into KLIA in October but since it is in talks with Jet Airways over a proposed alliance, they have gone back to the drawing boards to discuss their move.
The airlines in India are consolidating and it is learnt that Kingfisher has the rights to fly into KLIA from Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai.
Its first point of departure is still unknown but sources said the airline, owned by tycoon Vijay Mallaya, was keen on KLIA.
In December, Kingfisher took over India’s first low-cost carrier Air Deccan, transformed it into a value carrier and named it Kingfisher Red. Kingfisher hoped to use Red’s international rights to expand.
A travel agent contacted by StarBiz said he was looking forward to Kingfisher’s debut as it would provide travellers with more choice of flights into India.
Besides Malaysia Airlines, other carriers plying the route include Air India Express and Jet Airways.
Indian Airlines has stopped plying the route temporarily. AirAsia will start the KL-Trichy route in December.
Best Air, on the other hand, is aiming to tap into the huge Bangladesh-Malaysia migrant worker traffic. Currently, Emirates is enjoying a large share of this market.
The KLIA has been marketing itself globally and this year, it managed to get one additional airline compared with five last year – JetstarAsia, Tiger Airways, Nepal’s Yeti Airlines, SilkAir and Air Niugin. Yeti has stopped flying into KLIA after six months.
Next year, the airport hoped to secure more new airlines, an official from Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd, the operator of KLIA, said.
With Best Air, there are 55 airlines flying into KLIA. From January till September, the airport handled 20.5 million passengers.
Source : STAR
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