Malaysia Airlines, Thai eye return to Brisbane

Malaysia Airlines and Thai Airways are both keen to return to Brisbane, but it’s a matter of having enough aircraft in the hangars – or rather, in the air – to meet their ambitions.

There was a brief blip of hope on the horizon in July, when the global airline scheduling system briefly listed five Malaysia Airlines flights per week between Brisbane and Kuala Lumpur beginning in March 2025 on the airline’s workhorse A330.

While the short-lived schedule later vanished, it sparked speculation that the Malaysian flag carrier was getting set to put Brisbane back on its network map.

While Malaysia Airlines is facing the same shortfall of aircraft as bedevilling other carriers around the world, 20 all-new Airbus A330neo jets are on their way, which could provide added short-term flexibility for the fleet.

The first A330neo is slated to arrive in Kuala Lumpur on October 29, and Malaysia Aviation Group CEO Captain Izham Ismail tells Executive Traveller “we are then expecting to have five in our fleet by the end of Q1 2025.”

Those five jets, which boast new private business class suites, are already spoken for – Melbourne will take honours as the inaugural A330neo route on Monday November 25, 2024, to to be followed by Auckland, Tokyo and Doha, while Ismail also name-checked India as another early A330neo market.

Speaking with Malaysia Airlines Chief Commercial Officer Dersenish Aresandiran in late 2023, Executive Traveller was told Brisbane was “under review.”

“Australia is one of our core markets (and) ideally we want to increase all our frequencies into Australia to where we were in pre-Covid.”

Australia will eventually see all of its A330 flights taken over by the more modern A330neo.

As for Thai Airways, the Star Alliance member is also eager to restart Brisbane-Bangkok flights.

Brisbane "features prominently on our radar,” assures Otto Gergye, Thai Airways’ Commercial Advisor to the CEO.

“It's a question of getting enough aircraft,” said Gergye, speaking at the aviation industry’s CAPA Summit held at The Star Brisbane this week.

There’s also competition with other destinations on Thai’s worldwide network for the limited number of aircraft, Gergye explains. 

“Sometimes, you have opportunities… last year, we had the opportunity to enter into a joint venture with Turkish Airlines,” he cites by way of example.

“For that, we needed to fly to Istanbul, which gives us great coverage to a hundred European cities, so that was important.”

“It’s a matter of where do we fly, and where do we put the aircraft. So, when we get around to balancing the network, Brisbane will come on board.”

And whenever that is, Brisbane Airport promises there’ll be room at the arrival and departure gates.

“Brisbane has the fastest capital city growth rate in Australia and for airlines, this means even more opportunity,” said Brisbane Airport Corporation chief executive Gert-Jan de Graaff, speaking at the same CAPA conference.

“I promise that it will be worth it. We are creating a space for your, Brisbane is ready for you.”