AirAsia ready to serve more travellers as Sabah reopens for interstate travel

RM13 promo flights within East Malaysia, RM99 to/from Peninsula

AirAsia will be mounting more flights to, from and within Sabah from 1 November as the state further relaxes entry requirements for Malaysians and non-Malaysians, reopening the state for domestic tourism.

Sabah Covid-19 disaster management committee has announced that out-of-state visitors no longer need to obtain entry approval from the state government and police starting Nov 1. Apart from being fully vaccinated against Covid-19, they only need to present a negative Covid-19 RT-PCR or RTK-Ag test result.

The State also requires travellers between 12-18 years old to have received at least one dose of the two-dose Covid-19 vaccine, and children under the age of 12 to be accompanied by fully vaccinated parents or guardians. For the latest travel SOPs to Sabah click here.

From today until 7 November, guests can book seats for one-way flights to anywhere from Penang, Kuala Lumpur and other cities to Kota Kinabalu, Sandakan and Tawau from as low as RM99 only, while one-way flights within and between Sabah and Sarawak are going from as low as RM13 only.

The flights are available for booking on the airasia Super App by clicking on the ‘Flights’ icon, for travel from 8 November 2021 until 29 October 2022. Guests with credit accounts may use them to redeem for these flights. Promo seats are limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

CEO of AirAsia Malaysia, Riad Asmat said: “We would like to congratulate and thank the Sabah State Government and State Disaster Management Committee for allowing the resumption of interstate travel. While Sabahans can now look forward to better convenience with our higher flight frequencies to return to their hometowns and reunite with their loved ones, many others can’t wait to come back to Sabah to explore and enjoy the best that nature has to offer with its many beautiful islands, mountains, scrumptious food and friendly people.

“We are all geared up for travel resumption in Sabah with the strictest health and safety protocols in the best interest of our guests and employees. AirAsia will be mounting almost 300 weekly flights from 1 November, connecting Kota Kinabalu, Sandakan and Tawau in Sabah with Kuala Lumpur and other key cities in the Peninsula and Sarawak. This is a 75% increase from over 170 weekly flights currently.

“AirAsia has been a long term player in Sabah tourism and we look forward to working more closely with the State government, the Sabah Tourism Board and other relevant agencies to ensure the highest standards of compliance and conformance are in place for every single flight that we operate.”

Tourism is Sabah’s third largest economic contributor after agriculture and manufacturing, supporting more than 80,000 jobs in the State.

AirAsia assures the highest safety standards are in place as part of its robust Covid-19 mitigation plan including by accepting only fully-vaccinated guests onboard, making it mandatory to check-in via the airasia Super App that integrates with vaccination records on MySejahtera, and soon to launch FACES facial recognition boarding system that will make the entire journey fully digital and contactless.

AirAsia has spent the period of downtime in travel over the past one-and-a-half years to further improve and revamp its flight procedures and processes. In the highest interest of safety and wellbeing of all its guests and employees, AirAsia will accept only fully-vaccinated guests on board its flights, and likewise ensure only fully-vaccinated employees will operate flights and be on-duty at airport terminals.

Despite mostly not flying for a good part of the past 20 months, all AirAsia’s aircraft are properly maintained according to procedures set by the manufacturer. AirAsia has set up an in-house maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) unit called Asia Digital Engineering that provides services not only to AirAsia but also other airlines. Likewise, all its pilots and cabin crew are regularly sent for mandatory refresher courses and ongoing retraining so that they are always on top of their job.