The low-cost airline's commercial executive vice-president Kathleen Tan said: "For the first time, we will be flying to one destination from two of our hubs - Bangkok and the KLIA LCCT [Kuala Lumpur's low-cost terminal]- on the same day.

"Shenzhen will act as our initial gateway to the mainland. At present, our only China destination is Macau, which has proven to be very popular," Tan said in a recent inter?view.

She said the airline would also be flying to Guilin, Xiamen, Haikou and Kunming. Previously, AirAsia had been operating charter flights to some Chinese cities, such as Guilin.

Tan expects the flights to Xiamen to start in the next three months.

AirAsia is considering a four-times-weekly schedule for this flight from Kota Kinabalu.

At present, the only international destination for the airline from Kota Kinabalu is Macau, on a daily basis.

As for the other cities, Tan said AirAsia expected to start services there by the end of the year.

"We are quite used to Guilin and Haikou because of the charter flights. The Kunming sector will probably start in the last quarter of the year," she added.

Tan said that, at the moment, AirAsia was still looking at Chinese cities within a four to four-and-a-half hour flight time.

"We will have quite an extensive network in China when our long-haul operations under AirAsiaX roll out later this year. Then we will look at cities all over China, including Tianjin, Hangzhou, Chengdu and even Chongqing," she said.

Tianjin is a city about two hours from Beijing, while Hangzhou is about an hour from Shanghai.

AirAsiaX, which is expected to start operations in September, is a franchise of AirAsia that is to be operated by FAX.

The two airlines share common directors.

The Star

Asia News Network

PETALING JAYA, MALAYSIA