AirAsia Sells 13,000 Seats For New Tianjin Route Within A Week

19 Feb 2009

BEIJING, - Despite the economic gloom, Malaysia's budget carrier AirAsia has sold 13,000 seats for its new service to Tianjin, since bookings opened a week ago.

Tianjin is AirAsia's first destination in northern China.

AirAsia's inaugural flight to the busy port city will take off on April 2, the eighth overall destination in China and the airline has plans to grow its mainland network to three more cities.

"We have already received 13,000 bookings for Tianjin with about 15 per cent from China and the rest mostly from Malaysia," Kathleen Tan, Air Asia's commercial regional head, told Bernama after meeting Beijing-based media and travel agents on Thursday to promote the new route.

One-way tickets from Tianjin are sold from RM199 from Kuala Lumpur and 428 yuan(RM1=1.9 yuan) from Tianjin.

The port city, which co-hosted the 2008 Olympics football competition, is 30 minutes by high speed train to Beijing's South Station.

AirAsia will use a new A330 plane with 383 seats for the direct six-hour and five times weekly service.The flight will depart Kuala Lumpur at 8.30am and arrive in Tianjin at 3.50 pm. There is no time difference between Malaysia and China.

Tan projected AirAsia's passenger load from China this year to rise to 1.5 million from 1.1 million last year.

Chengdu, the provincial capital of Southwestern Sichuan province, is the next stop for Air Asia in the second half of the year, Tan said.

"There is good potential in Chengdu with many Malaysians working there as well as other businessmen and foreign investments," she said.

AirAsia already services Guangzhou, Guilin, Haikou, Hangzhou and Shenzhen in China and the Special Adminstrative Regions (SAR) of Hong Kong and Macao.

It has also announced plans to expand to the cities of Chongqing and Xian on the mainland.