Air Mauritius Goes Direct to Shanghai

Posted 05/01/2012

Air Mauritius is to introduce a direct link from the Indian Ocean Island to Shanghai this summer, eliminating a previous stopover on the route in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.  From March 26, 2012 the carrier will offer a weekly non-stop service to Shanghai Pu Dong, but in the process will reduce capacity to Kuala Lumpur from three to two flights per week. 

The airline currently uses an Airbus A330-200 on the Mauritius – Kuala Lumpur – Shanghai route, and although the Malaysian capital will continue to be served with the equipment, the new direct Shanghai flight will be operated by a larger Airbus A340-300.  In the past year Air Mauritius has seen O&D traffic between the island archipelago and Shanghai (including those flying with Emirates Airline via its Dubai hub) more than treble to 5,300 passengers, while demand to and from Kuala Lumpur (a route also served by Malaysia Airlines) has seen a growth of 19.8 per cent to around 23,000 passengers.

The network change is part of a stronger focus on emerging economies as the current European debt crisis is impacting visitors from its main markets such as France, Italy and the UK.  Although Air Mauritius reported a strong first quarter, its second quarter performance was weak as a €4.8 million profit in this period last year translated into a €6.3 million net loss, increasing first semester losses to €17.7 million, compared with € 6.8 million last year.

In November 2011 the airline acknowledged in a statement that the number of tourists travelling from Europe was “hardly growing” and even major markets such as Italy and the UK were down on the previous year.  “France, which is the largest market for Mauritius and Air Mauritius, “seemed to be running out of steam,” according to the carrier.

---

With effect from March 19, 2012 the Breaking News coverage on Routesonline is powered by Airline Route.  For more analysis on these stories please read our expanded coverage of the key stories of the day in The HUB. 

You can also keep up to date with the latest network development news by following the live updates from @Routesonline, @TheHUBRoutes, @RouteExchange and @airlineroute on Twitter.  While all the latest news from our events can be seen by searching the #RoutesAfrica, #RoutesAmericas, #RoutesAsia, #RoutesCIS, #RoutesEurope and #WorldRoutes hashtags.

All material is copyright of UBM Aviation Routes but the views expressed are not necessarily the views of UBM Aviation Routes and the company shall therefore not be liable for the contents of any article that appears on the site.  Although the best efforts have been taken in collecting and checking the material we can not and do not warrant that the information contained in this product is complete or accurate and does not assume and hereby disclaims liability to any person for any loss of damage caused by errors or omissions.

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.