Malaysia Airports continues to attract new routes to its five largest airports Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Kota Kinabalu, Kuching and Langkawi. Since the beginning of the year, Malaysia Airports has welcomed over 55 new routes from 12 airlines, generating around 200 additional weekly flights, a significant achievement given the current economic climate and the impact high oil prices is having on the world's airlines.

At Kuala Lumpur International Airport, national carrier Malaysia Airlines has started Karachi and Yogyakarta, whilst Asia's fastest growing low cost carrier Air Asia has launched Guangzhou, Yogyakarta, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh City, Hong Kong, Haikou, Guilin, Batam and Pekanbaru (Indonesia Air Asia). Air Asia's long haul sister company Air Asia X has launched Hangzhou and Gold Coast. Kuala Lumpur has also attracted two new low cost carriers on the deregulated Singapore route, Jetstar Asia and Tiger Airways.

Penang Airport has received three new routes from Sriwijaya Air and Indonesia Air Asia as well as increased frequencies from Cathay Pacific. In East Malaysia, Kota Kinabalu has gained four new air services: Jakarta, Denpasar (both operated by Indonesia Air Asia), Manila (Cebu Pacific) and Labuan (Air Asia). Indonesia Air Asia has also launched new services from Kuching to Jakarta and Denpasar. Langkawi has attracted a number of new carriers operating short charter programmes, for example, Hong Kong Airlines has operated a short programme this summer to Hong Kong.

The rest of the year continues to look bright with another 7 destinations already announced to start before the end of the year. From Kuala Lumpur, Air Asia X will continue their network expansion to Australia starting services to Melbourne and Perth in November. Air Asia will start Tiruchirapally and Air Niugini, a new carrier to Kuala Lumpur, is planning to start new services to Papua New Guinea. Firefly will also start two new points from Penang to Medan and Banda Aceh.

There is not expected to be any new carriers on the fully deregulated KL - Singapore trunk route from 1st December 2008. However, Tiger and Air Asia have already announced considerable frequency increases with both carriers adding an additional 4 daily frequencies, Air Asia up to 6 daily from 2 daily and Tiger up to 5 daily from daily. This means there are an additional 56 weekly flights on top of the current 129 weekly flights between KL and Singapore, an increase of over 40%.

Dato' Seri Bashir Ahmad Abdul Majid, Managing Director of MAHB commented that "Malaysia Airports is also confident that during the Routes conference the airport group is close to completing negotiations with two to three new carriers to start operations into Malaysia before the end of the year, so watch this space!"