AirAsia, Skytrax ‘world’s best low-cost airline’, recently celebrated its five times weekly direct flights between the two cities of Abu Dhabi and Kuala Lumpur.

In conjunction with the inaugural flight celebration, AirAsia is offering free seats for the route to guests who book their flights and hotels via GoHoliday; AirAsia’s holiday division at goholiday.airasia.com for selected hotels in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi, a statement said.

The Go Holiday Free Flight offer is available for booking period from November24 to 27 for travel from December 1 to January 31, 2010.

“Today’s launch signifies an important milestone in the field of aviation and tourism to Malaysia as well as the UAE,” said Dato’ Yahaya Abdul Jabar, Ambassador of Malaysia to the UAE.

“The launch of 5 times weekly flights to Abu Dhabi from Kuala Lumpur will be mutually beneficial to both Malaysia and Abu Dhabi tourism, as we can expect a considerable increase in both inbound and outbound travel to both destinations, which bodes well for the economy for both Malaysia and the Middle East..”

Abu Dhabi which is AirAsia X’s first destination in the Middle East will complement AirAsia X’s future growth in the market besides feeding more traffic to both countries.

With excellent air connectivity between Abu Dhabi and Kuala Lumpur, mutual economic benefits can be expected as AirAsia’s low fares and innovative services will stimulate more travel both inbound and outbound from these two cities, the statement said.

The UAE population could also take advantage of Kuala Lumpur as the connecting gateway to over 130 routes to 70 hot destinations in Asia and beyond.

Ahmed Hussein, deputy director general, Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority said: “Today, AirAsia X is really bringing an X factor to Abu Dhabi – X for Exceptional air links that AirAsia is now providing this destination to better penetrate the extremely important Asian market.

"There is much here to engage the Asian traveller – and indeed the authority is so convinced of the market that it is now running specialist training courses for our industry stakeholders on how to specifically serve this segment of the market which has its own individual needs.”

“With a flying time of only around seven hours to Singapore and Malaysia – the market has much to offer us. AirAsia’s network to the vast market Chinese market will also increase Abu Dhabi’s access to the People’s Republic which we regard of such great potential that the authority now has three offices operating there,” he concluded.

Azran Osman-Rani, CEO of AirAsia X, said, “Abu Dhabi has long been on our network radar and we are very proud to liberalize the market to the world.  The demand for the route has been steady with 60 per cent of the load coming from the UAE. This is indeed a clear testament that AirAsia’s low fares have empowered people to fly. Likewise, we are excited to play a key role in promoting Abu Dhabi’s beautiful city and people to the rest of the world.

“With the convenient ground transportation services available, guests may get to Dubai in less than 60 minutes from the Abu Dhabi International Airport. In fact, our guests from the ASEAN region may use Abu Dhabi as a connecting gateway to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan and many more destinations in the Middle East.”

He continued: “We have been promoting Abu Dhabi aggressively to Malaysians, across the ASEAN region and even beyond to destinations such as China, Australia and United Kingdom, in fact we have also included Abu Dhabi in our recent promotion campaign; cross selling the market to other destinations.  We are also promoting Abu Dhabi on our website, AirAsia.com.”

“We are certain that the Middle East will definitely leverage from the huge exposure gained from these initiatives. Our current network already covers Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Indochina, Singapore, China, India, Australia and the UK,” concluded Azran.

AirAsia’s inaugural flight to Abu Dhabi departed from LCC Terminal on November 23, 2009 with the Airbus A340 aircraft with 286-seater capacity including 30 premium seats. – TradeArabia News Service