Southeast Asia’s biggest budget airline group AirAsia is going longer-haul with a route from Kuala Lumpur across the Indian Ocean to Nairobi.
Ahead of the first flight on November 15, AirAsia said the route, which is to be operated by its “medium-haul” carrier AirAsia X, would help with “driving tourism growth for both regions.”
Malaysia has long been a popular destination for tourists, with over 20 million foreign visitors a year in the decade before the Covid pandemic and lockdowns.
Kuala Lumpur International Airport was recently named the world’s seconnd most-connected airport by OAG Aviation, a ranking based in large part on AirAsia’s short-haul and cut-price network of destinations across Southeast Asia and AirAsia X’s longer routes to cities such as Sydney and Tokyo.
Nairobi has for decades functioned as a de facto regional business center for East Africa and a gateway for safari holidays, including for Chinese and Indian visitors, the numbers of which have surged in recent years.
Southeast Asia appears to be the next target market. In a joint statement, AirAsia and the Kenya Tourism Board said Nairobi was “positioned as a major hub” in East Africa, where there are plans to pull in up to 14 million tourists a year.
Malaysia’s per-capita gross domestic product was over $11,600 in 2023, according to World Bank data, putting it above some European countries.
Kenya’s was much lower, at around $2,000, although there are pockets of middle class and wealthy people around Nairobi – just as regions around Kuala Lumpur report average incomes closer to $30,000 a year – meaning there should be enough people with deep pockets in both countries to pay for holiday flights across the Indian Ocean.
The first one-way economy seats on the four-times-a-week Kuala Lumpur-Nairobi route will cost 799 Malaysian ringgit, equivalent to around $185.
The route is the latest to be added to a growing network of links between countries and regions in Asia and Africa, a trend that could be accelerated by political and economic tensions elsewhere as fuel costs rise, with Europe at risk of losing out.
“When I am talking to some Asian carriers now, they are saying that flight times to Europe are becoming too long,” said Petri Vuori, senior vice president for route development at Finavia, which maintains Finland’s aviation system.
Speaking at the October 6-8 Routes World industry conference in Bahrain, Vuori cited wars in Europe and the Middle East that are making it harder and more expensive for airlines to fly certain routes.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has forced flights to avoid Russian airspace when entering and exiting Finland, an expensive and time-consuming diversion, while since last year, dozens of airlines elsewhere have at times had to take longer routes to and from the eastern Mediterranean as tensions soared in the Middle East.
