The CEO of Malaysia Aviation Group has confirmed Malaysia Airlines (MH, Kuala Lumpur International) will initially send its A330-900N to Melbourne Tullamarine in late November before deploying the aircraft onto Kuala Lumpur-Auckland International in December.
Speaking to Executive Traveller, Izham Ismail said the first of twenty A330-900Ns would arrive in Kuala Lumpur in October and start operating MH148/149 on November 25. The airline currently uses an A330-300 on its twice-daily roundtrips to Melbourne. The new aircraft type will also take over the daily A330-300-operated Auckland flights in late November, and routes to Doha Hamad International and Tokyo Narita in March 2025.
"We are expecting to have five in our fleet by the end of Q1 2025," Ismail said, adding that he wanted to take the current double-daily services to Sydney Kingsford Smith and Melbourne to triple-daily, and go double-daily into Auckland. He said these would provide a good passenger feed for Kuala Lumpur-Paris CDG flights set to start in March.
According to the ch-aviation PRO airlines module, Malaysia Airlines operates to 82 airports in 25 countries. Its 92-strong fleet includes six A330-200s, three A330-200Fs, fifteen A330-300s, seven A350-900s, forty-two B737-800s, and four B737-8s, as well as nine ATR72-500s and six DHC-6-400s operated by subsidiary MASwings (MY, Kota Kinabalu). The first A330-900N, leased from Avolon, will be entered into the Malaysian register as 9M-MNG (msn 2080). That aircraft is still at Toulouse Blagnac.
The Malaysian Airlines -900Ns will gradually replace the A330-300s and feature 28 business-class seats (based on the Collins Aerospace Elevation platform) and 263 economy-class seats, for a total load of 291 passengers.
