02 November, 2008 AIRASIA Chairman Datuk Aziz Bakar is confident the new Kota Kinabalu-Singapore route will not jeopardise its Kota Kinabalu-Johor market.
He believes there is a market for the new KK-Singapore route despite the KK-Johor route providing a convenient way for people to visit Singapore via the Malaysian state.
Aziz said there are many people who would prefer to travel directly to Singapore even if the tickets may be more expensive.
"I think the market is big enough. It's not just a matter of dollars and cents that make people decide which flights to take, time is also a factor. Some people are willing to pay more for the benefit of convenience," he said, after launching AirAsia's inaugural flight to Singapore from KK, officiated by Tourism, Culture and Environment Assistant Minister, Bolkiah Haji Ismail, Saturday.
It is one of two new flights from East Malaysia to Singapore that will be operated by AirAsia. The other route, Kuching-Singapore, also commenced the same day.
The new two hour and 15 minutes flight will be operated once daily, departing KK at 6.40pm and from Singapore at 9.35pm.
Aziz said AirAsia is encouraged by the response to the inaugural flight, achieving a 55 per cent passenger load. The low cost carrier hopes that in due time the figures would rise above 70 per cent.
"The passenger load for this (inaugural) flight is 55 per cent. We will be very happy if we can achieve around 79 per cent in future," he said.
Aziz also expressed confidence that AirAsia would be able to achieve more than two million passenger arrivals to Sabah this year, compared to 1.8 million in 2007, which he said was "a far cry from when we started six years ago".
"AirAsia started operating flights to Sabah six years ago with only one flight per day. Now we have 10," said Aziz, who gave credit to local government agencies for their efforts to bring development to the State, which he believes has benefited AirAsia.
"We have always been confident with the State Government and its agencies, especially the tourism bodies. They have supported our business well by bringing development to the State, which in turn has attracted lots of tourists," said Aziz.
Bolkiah, meanwhile, said his Ministry was confident that it would achieve the targeted 22,000 passenger arrivals from Singapore to Sabah.
He said even though the number of these arrivals to Sabah during the third quarter of this year showed a slight drop compared with the same period in 2007, they are still upbeat about achieving the target.
"Last year we had a total of 18,306 arrivals from Singapore. And even though up to the third quarter of this year we have only 10,580 arrivals compared to 11,500 of the same period in 2007, we are still confident that we will hit the target," said Bolkiah.
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