Firefly to focus on 1.5 million passenger target

Philip See is currently the head of strategy at Malaysia Airlines Bhd, the sister company of Firefly

SUBANG: FlyFireFly Sdn Bhd will focus on reaching its target of 1.5 million passengers for 2017, before embarking on any future decision including acquiring new aircraft, its chief executive officer, Ignatius Ong said.

“For the first seven months of this year, we have achieved 800,000 passengers and we will maintain the current flight frequency until the end of this year, and then we see how 2018 will look like before making any decision,” he said in reply to a question and answer (Q&A) session today.

The Q&A was part of a breakfast session with the media, which was held to update the new organisations on the latest developments on Firefly. At present, FireFly’s fleet consists of 12 ATR 72-500, with each flying to eight destinations daily.

The carrier has reduced its fleet size to 12 aircraft from 18 aircraft in 2016 due to lower load factor of 60% as compared with 75% recorded during its seven-year operation.  

“Our strategy is to make sure that no aircraft remains idle in the hangar,” he said. The premium short-haul carrier has earlier targeted to reach 1.6 million passengers in 2017 as compared to about 1.8 million in 2016. - Bernama