Singapore Airlines (SIA) signed a wide-ranging commercial agreement with Malaysia Airlines Berhad (MAB) on Wednesday, October 30, to strengthen the long-standing partnership between the two airline groups.
The two national carriers have proposed to share revenue on flights between Singapore and Malaysia, expand codeshare routes, and participate in joint marketing activities to develop tourism.
The moves are subjected to regulatory approvals from the relevant competition authorities. The new agreement also includes SIA’s subsidiaries SilkAir and Scoot, as well as Firefly, the sister airline of MAB.
“We are very pleased to take our partnership with Malaysia Airlines to a new level," said Goh Choon Phong, Chief Executive Officer, SIA. "The expanded scope of our partnership has the potential to provide a significant boost to the tourism industries in both Malaysia and Singapore, as well as the wider Southeast Asia region.”
Under the partnership, flights between Singapore and Malaysia will operate under a joint business arrangement. MAB and SIA intend to coordinate flight schedules to provide customers with more flight choices and frequencies for passenger convenience.
The two airline groups also plan to offer joint fare products, align corporate programmes to enhance the value proposition to customers, and explore tie-ups between their frequent-flyer programmes.
Codeshare arrangements will also be expanded to include more destinations on each other’s networks. Today, the airlines codeshare on flights between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, Kota Kinabalu, Kuching and Penang.
With the expansion, SIA and SilkAir plan to codeshare on MAB’s domestic flights and as such serve a total of 16 destinations1 in Malaysia. In turn, MAB will progressively codeshare on flights between Singapore and Malaysia, Europe, South Africa and other destinations once necessary approvals are granted.
MAB CEO, Captain Izham Ismail, said, “We are honoured to collaborate alongside SIA in providing our customers a more competitive product between Malaysia and Singapore and the opportunity to travel to more global destinations. This partnership is more than a conventional partnership and we believe in the mutual benefits for both airline groups and countries.”