Air India today announced flights to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia which will begin from September 15, 2024. The airline will operate Daily flights and deploy two class A320neo on this route.
The flight will operate at below timings
AI384 DEL1300 – 2050KUL
AI385 KUL0830 – 1125DEL
Air India will become the second Indian carrier to operate to Malaysia, with the only other carrier being IndiGo which operates a daily service from Chennai, having shrunk from its earlier presence which saw it operate from Bengaluru and Delhi, in addition to Chennai. This will see the Air India group return to Malaysia after 2016, when Air India Express shut its flights from Chennai. Kuala Lumpur becomes the fifth new destination for Air India, having launched Phuket, Amsterdam, Ho Chi Minh City, Zurich in the recent past.
As one would notice the timings look a bit weird at first glance, with an overnight stay in Kuala Lumpur. I had written about these when the airline launched flights to Phuket and subsequent increase in capacity. With the main aim of connecting to its European bank, there are two ways of planning flights. One which involves two flights a day, which helps a two way connectivity comfortably or having a flight with timings as those to Kuala Lumpur. Typically this will have a tag to some other point in India. This helps give great timings for either Origin – Destination traffic or for connectivity. For example the Mumbai Singapore service operates as Mumbai – Singapore – Chennai – Singapore – Mumbai, where in the Mumbai – Singapore – Mumbai flight would have the people preferred red eye departure. The aircraft operates a day time departure to Chennai and back. Both these markets are different and the airline, if it has to take a hit, takes it on the shorter sector. This is a smarter way to utilise the aircraft as compared to what Jet Airways or Kingfisher Airlines did in the past – parking the plane in Singapore for long hours.
The current timings ensure that there is two way connectivity right from the first flight unlike that to Phuket or Ho Chi Minh City. These timings have an opportunity to start another flight with the same aircraft in due course of time. A departure with a one hour ground time at 2150 would allow the airline to be in Chennai at 2315 hours. A return at 0015 hours would get the aircraft back to Kuala Lumpur at 0645 hours the next day, well in time for the departure to Delhi.
While this looks perfect on paper, will Air India choose Chennai or Bengaluru with the ability to have nearly identical timings to Bengaluru, ability to swap planes amongst the many it parks or would park in future and strengthen its publicly Stated third hub in India. The market size to Kuala Lumpur from Chennai and Bengaluru is different. There is a lot of cultural connect between Tamil Nadu and Kuala Lumpur while Bengaluru is largely a tourist and Business market. Chennai sees VFR – Visiting Friends and Relatives traffic. I would believe that Air India will opt for Bengaluru, as it has less competition compared to Chennai. If and when it has to start Chennai – Kuala Lumpur, it may be a route for Air India Express.
Network Thoughts
There never is a concept like too many spokes for a hub. However, planning a flight based purely on a feeder network is not the best of planning. The ideal mix of feeder traffic and Origin – Destination traffic makes the route work financially. Air India will compete with Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Qatar Airways, Saudi amongst others for the traffic to points in Europe.
With IndiGo’s expansion imminent pending a formalisation of codeshare with Malaysia Airlines, Air India’s focus will be on getting feed from Kuala Lumpur for its European bank, while IndiGo’s focus will be on feeding flights beyond Kuala Lumpur on Malaysia Airlines with both trying to grab a share of the India – Malaysia market, which has grown thanks to the liberal visa policies in place right now.
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Brilliant post. I follow your website for many years, you have an uncanny way to going beyond the press release and talking about the market authoratively.
I absolutely loved how you rightly predicted the additional flights to Phuket and simplified the explanation for the current timings to KL