Malaysia Airlines will be implementing a route rationalisation exercise in 1Q2023 with the suspension of the Kuala Lumpur-Brisbane route effective March 27, 2023.
Operations on non-stop flights between Kuala Lumpur to four other existing Australian destinations – Adelaide, Sydney, Perth and Melbourne – will continue, providing up to 43 direct services a week between Australia and Malaysia.
Customers who need to travel to Brisbane can leverage on Malaysia Airlines’ codeshare and oneworld partner, Qantas to connect from Sydney and Melbourne to Brisbane.
Malaysia Airlines’ group CEO Izham Ismail explained that the decision to suspend services to Brisbane was to ensure the airline could “operate and utilise our fleet at an optimum level” while maximising revenue on every route.
He added that the airline’s Australia network will be at 98 per cent capacity of pre-pandemic levels by March 2023, with forward bookings to the Australian cities, excluding Brisbane, showing great demand beyond 1Q2023, with numbers significantly ahead of the same period in 2019. Full recovery is expected by 2024.
“This year we added new destinations from Kuala Lumpur to Doha, Haneda and Yogyakarta as well as from Kota Kinabalu to Singapore; and will continue to explore markets that spur economic growth for the country, while helping business and trade,” he shared.
The last flight on this route will depart Brisbane to Kuala Lumpur on March 26, 2023.
