Jump to content
MalaysianWings - Malaysia's Premier Aviation Portal
Ikman Ikreza

Melaka Air to Offer Flights from Melaka Airport Beginning 11 November 2011

Recommended Posts

So now the contract with Firefly will soon expires and they dont want to renew it.. Said in the news Melaka Air is waiting for green light from DCA to purchase and operate an ATR-42.. Lets see how that will work out.. :nea:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Firefly explains non-renewal of agreement

 

FIREFLY, a subsidiary of Malaysian Airline System Bhd (MAS), yesterday said that its aircraft leasing agreement with the Malacca state government was not renewed due to non-fulfilment of the terms of the charter agreement.

 

"As a responsible corporation, we needed to do what is in the best interest of the company," MAS Sdn Bhd (formerly known as FlyFirefly Sdn Bhd) chief executive officer Ignatius Ong told Business Times.

 

Ong was responding to a New Straits Times report on Saturday which said that the leasing agreement with the state-owned Melaka Air Sdn Bhd, which had expired on October 27 - six months after it was inked - was not renewed.

 

The collaboration between Melaka Air and Firefly was for the thrice weekly Malacca-Penang-Malacca route, using Firefly's ATR 72-500 aircraft.

 

Melaka Air's chairman Syed Mahaza Syed Dakian was reported as saying that the decision to not renew the agreement came about because Melaka Air was not satisfied with the services provided by Firefly in jointly operating the charter services.

 

He stated that Firefly would seek advance payment from Melaka Air before passengers are picked up at the Batu Berendam international airport in Malacca.

 

Syed Mahaza said that the board of directors of Melaka Air has decided to purchase its own 42-seater ATR twin-turbo propeller plane within the next three months, to resume the Malacca-Penang route.

 

A check by Business Times with aviation players, however, revealed that there was no further renewal of the agreement due to Melaka Air's failure to fulfil several fundamental considerations of a charter contract.

 

"This essentially means that the leasing party did not make their payments on time and were always in arrears and this is why the service had to be stopped by the aircraft owner," one source said.

 

The source added that while the total amount being owed to Firefly was not known, Melaka Air was in arrears of a few months.

 

Firefly in a statement to Business Times said that sufficient time had been given to Melaka Air to notify its customers that the joint service was being terminated.

 

Since April this year, Firefly has been operating twice weekly charter flights between Kuala Lumpur to Nanning in Southern China, via Penang.

 

Ong gave his assurance that other than the Melaka Air chartered flights, the status quo remains on all scheduled routes of Firefly from and into Penang.

 

"We always keep our charter business options open," he noted, "and where an opportunity arises we will review it, although it all hinges on aircraft availability. This is something we look at only when we have spare aircraft downtime and since the uti-lisation of our fleet of 12 planes is well above 80 per cent, we do not have much spare time for charters and tend to do these on an ad hoc basis".

 

Source: http://www.btimes.co...EFLY28/Article/

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...