Fancy a trip to beautiful, sunny Maldives? Well, you’ll have to come out a little bit more out of pocket from March 1 onwards, because budget carrier Air Asia X is discontuing its flights to the island nation, citing adverse market conditions.
However, the airline is keeping open its routes to nearby Colombo, Sri Lanka with four direct flights per week from Kuala Lumpur beginning March 2.
According to the company, the KL-Male route was discontinued to recalibrate operational costs and to refocus on filling out capacity for Air Asia X’s primary markets, namely Australia, China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
Air Asia X CEO Azran Osman-Rani states that the decision to shutter the route to Maldives was a difficult one, but was necessitated by the need to develop and maintain more profitable routes.
“Despite our best efforts, external factors such as the devaluation of Asean currencies in relation to the US dollar and a chronic shortage of hotel rooms in Maldives has resulted in thousands of cancelled reservations by travel agencies,” he said in a statement released yesterday.
Azran also said that the airline will redistribute aircraft freed up from the Maldive routes to bolster routes that have higher demand and are more profitable.
Air Asia X customers who have already purchased tickets to and from Male scheduled to take off after the discontinuation will be given the option to either receive a full refund, switch to another Air Asia X destination, or to switch return flight dates from Male to Kuala Lumpur at no additional charge.
Photo: Sarah Ackerman / Flickr
Source: Sinar Harian
