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4 hours ago, Chris Tan said:

Not sure how MI and FY jet are even comparable. The former was a full-service regional airline that was closely integrated with SQ. When did FY jet become such an airline?

I guess you are right. Which actually begs the question what is Firefly (Jet) actually? The turboprops serves a niche out of SZB. The jet?

I just don't really understand why must MAG have two brands. It is not as if MH is such a premium luxury brand that it must be distinguished.

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49 minutes ago, jani said:

I guess you are right. Which actually begs the question what is Firefly (Jet) actually? The turboprops serves a niche out of SZB. The jet?

I just don't really understand why must MAG have two brands. It is not as if MH is such a premium luxury brand that it must be distinguished.

SZB is niche at the moment but the airline has a budget feel to it

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2 hours ago, jani said:

I guess you are right. Which actually begs the question what is Firefly (Jet) actually? The turboprops serves a niche out of SZB. The jet?

I just don't really understand why must MAG have two brands. It is not as if MH is such a premium luxury brand that it must be distinguished.

MH has many legacy issues - it is a large and inefficient organisation. Perhaps MAG is trying to use FY Jet as a low cost (but not low fare) operation and slowly migrate MH routes to it before closing the MH narrow body ops. It is easier that trying to change MH. If this works, they might even consider doing the same with the widebody ops.

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11 hours ago, jani said:

I just don't really understand why must MAG have two brands. It is not as if MH is such a premium luxury brand that it must be distinguished.

Why do you think MH's brand has been so watered down? Because they've been trying to fight on both fronts, and they're losing badly. It's a vicious cycle trying to compete with the likes of AK, both in price and service, which then drags down their yields while still falling behind.

By handing over the lower-yielding routes to FY, they can (theoretically) focus on being more full-service/premium.

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Ex-KUL, MH market has very limited premium market in Malaysia market itself. Those premium passengers have mostly opt for EK, Tk, QR, EY and SQ, leaving really limited passengers for MH. Locals want cheap cheap airfares even for J class, MAB is simply responding to the market demand in stripping down their previous offerings. Even if MH improves overnight with lie flat seat for J regional, 30-40kg complimentary check in luggage allowance, beef steak for J class etc will the local market bite the bullet? I don't think so. The other day I saw comments on FB ANA return ticket to Hokkaido Chitose RM2600, a lot commented expensive (Bear in mind ANA usual price is RM5K and above, JAL is RM7K and above). I wonder what is cheap for them in pre-covid era?? 

Singapore Airlines wouldn't have an issue, their "name" sells them well. MH is in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Just like TG. 

My only guess the MAB management put FY jet operating from PEN, KCH and BKI is to allow MH concentrate on its operation from KUL and leave the other smaller hubs to FY to take care. MH still fly in one or two flights to smaller hubs to connect the limited premium passengers to its international flights. 

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4 hours ago, JuliusWong said:

Ex-KUL, MH market has very limited premium market in Malaysia market itself. Those premium passengers have mostly opt for EK, Tk, QR, EY and SQ, leaving really limited passengers for MH. Locals want cheap cheap airfares even for J class, MAB is simply responding to the market demand in stripping down their previous offerings. Even if MH improves overnight with lie flat seat for J regional, 30-40kg complimentary check in luggage allowance, beef steak for J class etc will the local market bite the bullet? I don't think so. The other day I saw comments on FB ANA return ticket to Hokkaido Chitose RM2600, a lot commented expensive (Bear in mind ANA usual price is RM5K and above, JAL is RM7K and above). I wonder what is cheap for them in pre-covid era?? 

Singapore Airlines wouldn't have an issue, their "name" sells them well. MH is in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Just like TG. 

My only guess the MAB management put FY jet operating from PEN, KCH and BKI is to allow MH concentrate on its operation from KUL and leave the other smaller hubs to FY to take care. MH still fly in one or two flights to smaller hubs to connect the limited premium passengers to its international flights. 

Its not really a conductive environment for MH to operate in if it wants to go to the early 2000s premium unfortunately. For TG the thai royal family is still keeping it close to heart. Pricing wise last time i quote a coursemate 2018 that flying to London should be 4-6k for economy, he say its expensive and quoted the old days of transiting though Etihad for rm1.8k return. But many refuse to take account the idea of direct vs transit.

Malaysia itself precovid nobody wants to pay the USD 100 per hour global standard. Does not help almost 80% of your economy class customers are hovering at the RM2.5K monthly gross income. Buying power is the major issue and also even if we do improve the income many will still opt go low ball.

It also does not help our gov through many iterations has not been trying to coax high paying tourism and it sorting to mass family friendly tourism which in the global scene is now trending towards the LCC. Sq and to some extent TG still can command the high paying crowd on the front end cabin and fly with less than 100 pax on a b777-300ER and still make profit vs a 200 pax filled a330 struggling here and for d7 i last heard needing 330++ pax on certain sectors to break even.

As for FY transfer people may not see it now or are impatient that the transfer is slow or not the full domestic takeover. But note if FY does fully takeover domestic a lot of convenience is gone for good.
Wanna take your pets from east to west msia? nah cant do
Wanna transport medical and radioactive equipment to the east? nah cant do
Wanna fly vaccines? nah cant do
Wanna fly chemical or ICT electronics component? nah cant do
Wanna fly construction material? nah cant do
Wanna do logistic to ferry entertainment for concerts? nah cant do
Wanna fly sick person for immediate treatment? nah cant do
Wanna do logistic for Jabatan Pertanian or Haiwan in east msia? nah cant do

Some of the stuff MH transport on the daily basis are not in tonnes and are required daily on belly 737 passenger flights. Something dedicated freighters will put very low priority on.

FY as a whole cant do either of this and it seems management is not keen to do the full certification to take it due to costs. Same as why Ak never bothered to. Its also the reason MH is not keen to let go most of the east to west msia sectors to FY but will only transfer the inter flights as it will affect the supply logistics as a whole in east Malaysia.

Edited by jahur

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4 hours ago, JuliusWong said:

Ex-KUL, MH market has very limited premium market in Malaysia market itself. Those premium passengers have mostly opt for EK, Tk, QR, EY and SQ, leaving really limited passengers for MH. Locals want cheap cheap airfares even for J class, MAB is simply responding to the market demand in stripping down their previous offerings.

You know why EK, TK, QR etc. is cheaper from KUL to beyond destinations? It requires a connection. Try finding EK, TK, QR to DXB, IST, DOH respectively and you'd be shock how expensive it is. Companies pay more for nonstop travel KUL-LHR for RM20k RT in J - yes go for that instead of RM12k via IST/DOH. The 8k saving is not worth your time. A KUL-DXB standalone ticket is almost always more expensive than say a KUL-DXB-Europe ticket. Secondly, MH has a captive market from KUL. Most Malaysians are familiar with MH and some wouldn't mind paying a bit more to be on MH. Wanna fly nonstop on a full service carrier to Australia, NZ, or UK? MH is your only option. What about if you are traveling with kids? Do you want a 2h layover in the Middle East before continuing your journey?

We need MH to have a large network so they can connect passengers. Right now, there's no where passengers can connect to/from at KUL. QR flies more frequently and more destinations to Australia than MH. QF flies to more destinations in Europe than MH. So if you want KUL to be a hub, we need MH to be huge and we need to spend money on it. How can we improve KUL/MH when our locals disapprove spending money on it? What's the point of QF code-share/JV with MH when there's not much to offer to QF in terms of network, vis-a-vis other airlines flying into KUL. 

And MH is the only carrier that do beyond connections for other carriers (in a very limited way, OD can too). AK/D7? Forget about it.

1 hour ago, jahur said:

It also does not help our gov through many iterations has not been trying to coax high paying tourism and it sorting to mass family friendly tourism which in the global scene is now trending towards the LCC. Sq and to some extent TG still can command the high paying crowd on the front end cabin and fly with less than 100 pax on a b777-300ER and still make profit vs a 200 pax filled a330 struggling here and for d7 i last heard needing 330++ pax on certain sectors to break even.

As for FY transfer people may not see it now or are impatient that the transfer is slow or not the full domestic takeover. But note if FY does fully takeover domestic a lot of convenience is gone for good.
Wanna take your pets from east to west msia? nah cant do
Wanna transport medical and radioactive equipment to the east? nah cant do
Wanna fly vaccines? nah cant do
Wanna fly chemical or ICT electronics component? nah cant do
Wanna fly construction material? nah cant do
Wanna do logistic to ferry entertainment for concerts? nah cant do
Wanna fly sick person for immediate treatment? nah cant do
Wanna do logistic for Jabatan Pertanian or Haiwan in east msia? nah cant do

Some of the stuff MH transport on the daily basis are not in tonnes and are required daily on belly 737 passenger flights. Something dedicated freighters will put very low priority on.

I think you are talking to a wall here why MH is needed. Some are still calling for MH to be shut down or thinking/suggesting that MH closes its narrow body operations.

I am very surprised about TG - their tickets aren't the cheapest but yet they manage to attract people to fly their premium cabins. SQ is marketing and they have a huge network (being a financial center and a relatively wealthy home base helps too). MH neither has a great premium cabin nor a high yield home market.

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Before downsized, mh was a major carrier on kangaroo route. if mh have enough good yield transit pax, o&d yield from kul is secondary.

on kul-bkk, mh ticket price is generally more expensive than tg; tg serve 3 course meal and good range of alcohol. with limited network, poor service, etc, few pax are willing to pay premium price to travel mh.

 

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6 hours ago, jahur said:

Some of the stuff MH transport on the daily basis are not in tonnes and are required daily on belly 737 passenger flights. Something dedicated freighters will put very low priority on.

FY as a whole cant do either of this and it seems management is not keen to do the full certification to take it due to costs. Same as why Ak never bothered to .....

Any idea how much these certification costs amount to annually ? Is it really that prohibitive ?

A thought here, if there is genuine will to reallocate Peninsular to Borneo services to FY, surely gahmen or Khazanah can pump in the annual subsidies so that those services remain viable ? It's not like MAG is any stranger to gahmen/Khazanah financial 'assistance' anymore 😉

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27 minutes ago, BC Tam said:

Any idea how much these certification costs amount to annually ? Is it really that prohibitive ?

A thought here, if there is genuine will to reallocate Peninsular to Borneo services to FY, surely gahmen or Khazanah can pump in the annual subsidies so that those services remain viable ? It's not like MAG is any stranger to gahmen/Khazanah financial 'assistance' anymore 😉

That was what everyone at ak and mh asked for years to endorse/subsidise it. Mh took a bit chunk of its own expenses to do it. The gov was not keen. Now if they mh wants to transfer to FY the certification has to be own its own expenses. Also this nay overlap into the issue with some of the RAS service.

Certification costs quite a lot was one of the reason MASwings retained the MH code and most of the organizational procedures etc. Theres annual recurrency exams by IATA to be conducted on most employees and everything. Ak so far has attempted some of the certification like frozen dry materials. Not sure if they wanna take all the current cert that MH has. 

Edited by jahur

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23 minutes ago, jahur said:

That was what everyone at ak and mh asked for years to endorse/subsidise it. Mh took a bit chunk of its own expenses to do it. The gov was not keen...

New broom in the picture now, goes by name of Anthony I believe

Get a new story out - one that will sync with the sense of 'deprivation' amongst us Bornean Malaysians

A new story that promises said 'new broom' an opportunity to be seen and heard to be of some help to someone, somewhere

Money ? Can always print

😁

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12 hours ago, KK Lee said:

on kul-bkk, mh ticket price is generally more expensive than tg; tg serve 3 course meal and good range of alcohol. with limited network, poor service, etc, few pax are willing to pay premium price to travel mh.

MH has a home market advantage. MH is cheaper from BKK and TG is cheaper from KUL (try booking 2 oneways if you want to save money, TG ex-KUL and MH ex-BKK). And If you really want to save money on MH long-haul, MH is cheap ex-BKK/HKT (again, because you have to do a transit in KUL), so is SQ. 

10 hours ago, BC Tam said:

New broom in the picture now, goes by name of Anthony I believe

Get a new story out - one that will sync with the sense of 'deprivation' amongst us Bornean Malaysians

A new story that promises said 'new broom' an opportunity to be seen and heard to be of some help to someone, somewhere

People here who supposedly understand aviation aren't generally supportive of the idea of pumping more money into MH because they don't see it as necessary and it's a waste money. You want the general public to be supportive of MH by pumping more money in and make them understand why MH is crucial? 😂 Why pump more money into something I won't use (for now) when they think all these funds will be used for some sort of altruistic measures.

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On 3/8/2023 at 8:14 PM, KK Lee said:

Before downsized, mh was a major carrier on kangaroo route. if mh have enough good yield transit pax, o&d yield from kul is secondary.

on kul-bkk, mh ticket price is generally more expensive than tg; tg serve 3 course meal and good range of alcohol. with limited network, poor service, etc, few pax are willing to pay premium price to travel mh.

 

MH is doing 4-5x daily on the BKK route with A330s at times. Loads should be healthy i guess. 

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6 minutes ago, Pall said:

MH is doing 4-5x daily on the BKK route with A330s at times. Loads should be healthy i guess. 

Most probably the cargo demand is high now, and MH has a habit of cancelling one or two daily flights and combine those flight with others. Also, everyone is rushing to BKK, before the new compulsory insurance imposed by Thai government takes place. Will save a bit bit there. Hahahaha!

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3 hours ago, Pall said:

MH is doing 4-5x daily on the BKK route with A330s at times. Loads should be healthy i guess. 

Looking at TG/MH availability for the next week or so, it seems like BKK-KUL is doing better than KUL-BKK but KUL-BKK isn't doing bad either (morning/early afternoon flights ex-KUL are sold out). But this is probably not the best time to judge since we are in the middle of Malaysia's school holidays now.

3 hours ago, JuliusWong said:

Most probably the cargo demand is high now, and MH has a habit of cancelling one or two daily flights and combine those flight with others. 

Interesting. Can you give me an example of MH consolidating flights within the last month or so (canceling one or two of their 4-5 daily flights) to BKK? I can't seem to find any or maybe I am looking in the wrong place.

3 hours ago, JuliusWong said:

Also, everyone is rushing to BKK, before the new compulsory insurance imposed by Thai government takes place. Will save a bit bit there. Hahahaha!

Almost the same as everyone is rushing to EU/UK before they implement their ETIAS/ETA. At least this is included in the air ticket prices and no one really pays attention to the breakdown of their ticket cost.

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Speaking of Thai entry fee - I am curious how they'll implement it. It's easy for airlines to do a blanket 300THB fee on their tickets to Thailand, but what about those who aren't liable for the fee (Thai citizens, long term permit holders etc.)? Are they going to do a refund upon proof of visa/Thai passport or in the case of Mexico a few years ago where their entrance fee is "waived" if you buy your ticket from a Mexico point of sale or a RT ticket from Mexico 😂

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1st batch of handover

Bki-twu 

Bki-kch 

Vice vesa.

Bki-sdk not sorted due to insufficient aircraft.

1 aircraft with no spare based in BKI in may doing BKI-TWU-BKI-KCH-MYY-KCH-BKI until end of July. If some issue were to happen in between which i guarantee will happen regardless how spotless or brand new aircraft is. It's going to be the same airasia and myairline domino effect retiming+delay scams again. 

 

 

 

received_794190342131730.jpeg

Edited by jahur

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21 hours ago, jahur said:

1 aircraft with no spare based in BKI in may doing BKI-TWU-BKI-KCH-MYY-KCH-BKI until end of July. If some issue were to happen in between which i guarantee will happen regardless how spotless or brand new aircraft is. It's going to be the same airasia and myairline domino effect retiming+delay scams again. 

How do the plan to crew this? Is there only 1 set of crew for all 6 legs? That seems....very long!

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On 3/21/2023 at 2:02 PM, Craig said:

How do the plan to crew this? Is there only 1 set of crew for all 6 legs? That seems....very long!

Mli and fff seems to be slotted to fy fleet. Making it a 6 aircraft total by june at least. Bki-sdk prepped for mid may. 

Unconfirmed info fy to have 8-9 total 738 by year end with mlk mll joining. All the non Boeing sky interior 738 will exit mh by end of 2023.

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13 hours ago, jahur said:

Mli and fff seems to be slotted to fy fleet. Making it a 6 aircraft total by june at least. Bki-sdk prepped for mid may. 

So it seems like they will add another 737 to BKI's base?

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On 4/8/2023 at 9:14 AM, Craig said:

So it seems like they will add another 737 to BKI's base?

With the upcoming network, BKI might need 3-4 737s if their north asia entry is going to materialize. 

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On 3/21/2023 at 2:02 PM, Craig said:

How do the plan to crew this? Is there only 1 set of crew for all 6 legs? That seems....very long!

image.png

image.png

 

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Firefly bakal tawar laluan antarabangsa baharu ke Sarawak

https://tvstv.my/2023/04/11/firefly-bakal-tawar-laluan-antarabangsa-baharu-ke-sarawak/

KUCHING, 11 April: Malaysia Aviation Group (MAG) menerusi anak syarikatnya bakal menawarkan penerbangan antarabangsa baharu ke Sarawak.

Ketua Pegawai Eksekutif Penerbangan MAG, Ahmad Luqman Mohd. Azmi berkata, laluan baharu itu akan membabitkan beberapa destinasi di utara Asia dan China.

Sementara itu, Ahmad Luqman memaklumkan syarikat juga berhasrat untuk menambah bilangan pesawat Firefly bagi kelancaran operasi mereka.

“Kami (dijangka) akan mempunyai sekurang-kurangnya enam pesawat menjelang akhir tahun namun perancangannya ialah kita mahu menambah kepada 11 pesawat iaitu jumlah yang mencukupi untuk operasi,” katanya.

On 4/7/2023 at 7:17 PM, jahur said:

Mli and fff seems to be slotted to fy fleet. Making it a 6 aircraft total by june at least. Bki-sdk prepped for mid may. 

Unconfirmed info fy to have 8-9 total 738 by year end with mlk mll joining. All the non Boeing sky interior 738 will exit mh by end of 2023.

Just like what jahur have stated, 6 B737-800NG by June 2023. 11 by end of the year.

  1. 9M-MLF
  2. 9M-MLG
  3. 9M-MLH
  4. 9M-MLI (Due soon)
  5. 9M-MLJ
  6. 9M-FFF/ MLK/ MLL? 

Means potential three more additional airframes coming from other sources, if FFF, MLK and MLL are transferred to FY as well. All three are still currently active flying.

Edited by JuliusWong

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Malaysia Aviation Group (MAG) Transfers Intra-Borneo Services to Firefly

May be an image of text that says "Ifirefly Hello! East Malaysia Wearecoming coming Kota Kinabalu Miri Sandakan SABAH Tawau Tawau Kuching n SARAWAK"

https://www.fireflyz.com.my/malaysia-aviation-group-mag-transfers-intra-borneo-services-firefly

KLIA, 11 April 2023 - Malaysia Aviation Group (MAG) is set to facilitate an Intra-Borneo services transfer from Malaysia Airlines to Firefly, effective 16 May 2023 as a result of continued demand recoveries across all markets. Firefly will facilitate one-time daily return flights using the Boeing 737-800 between Kota Kinabalu (BKI) to Sandakan (SDK), Tawau (TWU), and Kuching (KCH), as well as a daily return service between Kuching (KCH) to Miri (MYY). This move is poised to offer passengers an unparalleled travel experience with comfort, convenience, and efficiency.

firefly-flight-schedule.png

Edited by JuliusWong

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It will be interesting to see what MASWings will become after FY has taken over in Borneo. Will it only operate RAS flights?

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