By Chan Quan Min
Malaysia Airlines has cancelled one out of two daily flights on the Kuala Lumpur – Beijing route effective May 1 presumably due to a drop in demand for flights between China and Malaysia in the wake of the MH370 tragedy.
The daily redeye flight with the flight number MH318 departing Kuala Lumpur for Beijing at 12:25 am has been removed from Malaysia Airlines’ online booking engine for departures May 1 onwards.
MH318 was previously tagged as MH370. Malaysia Airlines retired the MH370 Kuala Lumpur – Beijing and MH371 Beijing –Kuala Lumpur flight codes on March 14 as a mark of respect to the missing passengers and crew of MH370 departed March 8, 2014
The halving of flight frequencies would cut the number of seats offered by the carrier to Beijing from 4,000 to 2,000 seats per week. Malaysia Airlines has been offering passengers two daily flights between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing since early 2012.
Malaysia Airlines was not immediately available to explain why it was halving the number of scheduled flights on the Kuala Lumpur – Beijing route.
Aviation analyst Raymond Yap of CIMB said “an apparent drop in demand, particularly from China is probably one of the contributory reasons. Not coincidentally, the cancelled flight has the same timing as the original MH370 flight.”
“The other reason, of course, is that MAS is now short of one aircraft and it rationally chose to cancel the flight that had probably seen the steepest decline in demand,” Yap added.
At press time, Malaysia Airlines has not cut flight capacity to any of the airline’s five (including Hong Kong) other destinations in China.
The national carrier is facing strong public opposition in China with accusations of incompetence in handling the missing MH370 crisis. Last week, several of China’s top online travel agencies said they would boycott Malaysia Airlines flights.
Published passenger traffic data on Malaysia Airlines and Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd’s websites are accurate up to February 2014. Similar data for the month of March is not yet available.
Flight MH370 disappeared from radar screens in the early hours of March 8 along with 227 passengers and 12 crew. More than half, or 115 passengers were China nationals as the flight was a codeshare flight with China Southern Airlines.
News reports suggest that for routes other than to China, Malaysia Airlines appears to have weathered the MH370 crisis far better. Flights to Australia, according to a Sydney Morning Herald report are faring well as this was a “one-off freak accident.”
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