AirAsiaX and Christchurch Report Strong Six Months

Posted 12/10/2011

Christchurch International Airport and AirAsia X have reported strong passenger traffic during the first six month’s of the airline’s scheduled service from Kuala Lumpur, suggesting it is a great example of what can be achieved when an airline, airport and tourism bodies work together. 

According to official statistics the Kuala Lumpur-Christchurch route has stimulated the inbound Malaysia market by 4,034 per cent since the service commenced on April 1 and AirAsia X has been consistently reporting loads of more than 75 per cent, exceeding its own our expectations for the route.

“Malaysia is now New Zealand’s second largest inbound market from Asia, up from 7th prior to the arrival of AirAsia X, proving when you introduce direct capacity on a route, demand will follow,” said Matthew Findlay, General Manager Aeronautical Development, Christchurch International Airport. 

According to Azran Osman-Rani, Chief Executive Officer, AirAsia X, a number of airline records have now been broken on the route.  “We sold more than 30,000 tickets in the first three days after launching the route,” he said, and the success is pushing AirAsia X to consider boosting the frequency of the service. 

“The service has helped more New Zealand tourists get to Malaysia. That number grew by more than 72%, which shows more New Zealanders are travelling and more of them chose to visit Malaysia. In fact, Malaysia had the largest single increase in any market for travel by New Zealanders in the June quarter,” added Osman-Rani.

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PLEASE NOTE: From March 7, 2012 schedule data for all news stories has been extracted from OAG Schedules iNET; All GDS data is based on a live GDS update on the day of publication; Traffic data extracted from IATA BSP system for the year ending December 2011.  All information is subject to change.