KUALA LUMPUR: AirAsia’s inaugural service from Kuala Lumpur to Langkawi this morning under the travel bubble recorded a 100 per cent flight load, signifying a strong rebound for domestic air travel.

The low-cost carrier said the maiden flight — the first of nine scheduled daily flights from Kuala Lumpur — left Kuala Lumpur International Airport (klia2) at 9.50am utilising an Airbus A321neo aircraft.

“Aside from Kuala Lumpur (63 flights weekly), AirAsia also has flights to Langkawi departing from Penang (14 times weekly), Johor Bahru (seven times weekly), Ipoh (three times weekly) and Kota Bharu (three times weekly), making up a total of 90 weekly flights,” it said in a statement.

AirAsia Malaysia chief executive officer Riad Asmat said over 200,000 seats to Langkawi were sold in less than a week.

“To facilitate this movement, we have prepared extensively and implemented robust and comprehensive health and safety protocols to ensure all of our guests can travel safely, with our 100 per cent vaccinated crew and frontliners.

“After months of preparation, we are thrilled to get the country flying again and are ready to scale up our operations to meet overwhelming demand. We hope more travel bubbles will be established across the country soon in line with the accelerated vaccination roll-out, and eventually across the region when it is safe to do so,” he added.

AirAsia also launched its ride-hailing services in Langkawi today with a 100 per cent fully-vaccinated driver fleet. – Bernama