MAS to Scale down its International Network

15th Jul 2015

Malaysia Airlines restructuring exercise is entering a critical phase and the carrier is looking to scale down its international network beginning this August.

MAS to Reduce Several Services

According to plans, the carrier will reduce several of its services. This includes cancelling the Kuala Lumpur-Brisbane service, which is right now flying five times per week, as well as cutting the Kuala Lumpur to Perth service to one flight per day. Right now, this route is operated 12 times per week.

 In addition, MAS also plans to reduce its services to Melbourne and Sydney (both departing from Kuala Lumpur) to twice per day. Both of these are operated three times daily.

Malaysia Airlines flies Airbus A330-300 planes on all of these routes.

When it comes to Asia, Malaysia Airlines will likely change the plane it uses for the service to Hong Kong to a Boeing 737-800. The carrier uses 777-200ER of the same manufacturer currently for the route. The change will affect only one of the three daily flights to Hong Kong, with the other two keeping the 737-800s.

In addition to all of this, MAS is also looking to replace the 777-200ER with an Airbus A330-300 on the Jeddah daily service.

Malaysia Airlines official said the carrier will continue to reduce its capacity over the current and the following year.

With MAS lowering its capacity, this also means the airline will need fewer pilots and flight attendants than so far. The Malaysian carrier has already announced plans to go down to 14,000 employees in the next two years. At the moment, the carrier has a workforce of 20,000 people.

Turkish Airlines Extend Wet-Lease on MAS A330-200F to 2017

In the meantime, Turkish Airlines has expanded the wet-lease on the Malaysian Airlines Airbus A330-200F until 2017. The initial agreement was for only one year, and it ended last month.

Malaysia Airlines has a fleet of six Airbus A380s, 15 A330-300s, four A330-200Fs, 57 Boeing 737-800s, two 747-400Fs, 13 777-200ERs, nine ATR72-600s and 22 ATR 72-500s. The last two models (ATR 72s) are operated by MAS subsidiaries MASWings and Firefly.