MAS Eyes 80pc Load On A380 Flights To Paris

AMSTERDAM: Malaysia Airlines (MAS) expects a load factor of 80 per cent for its Kuala Lumpur-Paris-Kuala Lumpur daily route when the Airbus A380 is rolled out on March 1 next year to replace the current Boeing B777 daily services.

“France is a very big country. A lot of French people travel outside the country and, at the same time, we have a lot of business going on between the Malaysian government/businessmen and French government/businessmen as well as within the other European countries,” said MAS regional senior vice-president for the UK and Europe, Huib Gorter.

Furthermore, he added, Malaysia is part of the strongly growing tourism sector of the Asia Pacific region and the country itself is an attractive destination for Europeans despite the economic and financial crises in several regions of the world.

“One of the key things is to price your products creatively and at the right time.

“We have very very good airlines competing with us and we can never ever lose sight, we have to be on top of that and I think we have done it quite well,” he told Malaysian journalists attending the just recently concluded IATA Global Media Day 2012 held in Geneva.

Despite the gloomy eurozone economic outlook, Gorter sees next year as an excellent one for MAS in Europe as the A380 aircraft will definitely enhance MAS’ brandname.

He is confident that with the A380's introduction into service with an exciting new level of comfort, luxury and convenience in long-haul travel “we can expect the number of passengers to increase more and more”.

The A380 has a capacity of 494 seats in a three-class configuration comprising eight first-class seats and 350 economy-class on the main deck, together with 66 business-class seats and 70 economy-class seats on the upper deck.

- BTimes