AirAsia X to Move Cheap Flights to Gatwick
Malaysian budget airline AirAsia X has announced this week that it will switch its UK base from London Stansted to London Gatwick Airport this winter, in order to boost its British business offering cheap flights to Kuala Lumpur.
The cheap fares airline, which operates out of Kuala Lumpur will transfer to Gatwick on 24 October, in a move which it hopes will "maximise commercial opportunities" for the carrier.
Gatwick is a busier airport than Stansted and also offers more cheap flights to Europe and the USA than its east London counterpart. Both of these factors could drive passenger levels up, including among travellers wanting to take cheap flights from south-east Asia to Europe and the US.
From late October AirAsia X will operate five cheap flights to Kuala Lumpur a week, increasing its frequency to six flights a week from the middle of December.
The airline's chief executive Azran Osman-Rani commented: "Times are equally challenging now because of high oil prices and that affects longer haul routes, and the 13-hour flight to Kuala Lumpur is quite vulnerable. We're hoping the additional demand that Gatwick can generate can help to off set some of those higher cost challenges."
Another recent move by AirAsia X was to begin offering cheap flights to Paris from Kuala Lumpur, although Mr Azran insisted that there are no more plans to extend the airline's European reach:
"We're planning to build on our presence in Japan, the Middle East and North Asia where those are our growth areas. There'll be nothing more in Europe in the next 12 to 24 months," he insisted.
Budget Airline News posted by 
on 15 July 2011
cheap flights, cheap flights to Kuala Lumpur, cheap fares, cheap flights to Europe
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/corporatenews/view/1140694/1/.html
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