Malaysia Airlines and Air France to launch new A380 services
Malaysia Airlines is planning to start its A380 service from KL-London Heathrow from 2nd July 2012, As per the information provided at Airlineroute.net The 503 seater aircraft will be operating 3 times a week service initially and switch to daily service from 15th August 2012. The reservation for the same is open and the schedule will be as follows:
Kuala Lumpur – London Heathrow
MH002 KUL 2340 – 0550+1 LHR
MH003 LHR 1200 – 0725+1 KUL
The airline has opted for a 3 cabin configuration with 8 First Class seats on the Lower deck, 52 Business Class seats on the Upper deck and 96 Economy seats on the Upper Deck and 347 Economy seats on the Lower deck. For more details check out the link here.
Given that Malaysia Airlines and KLM have quite close links, people had been placing best on Amsterdam to be first city to be served by the A380 but now given that Malaysia airlines is set to join the OneWorld alliance Kuala Lumpur-London Heathrow route makes perfect sense and also with the Olympic games approaching British Airways would relish the idea of the superjumbo from the alliance bringing in traffic to the city. Now here is the catch, Malaysia Airlines will get the delivery of the aircraft in the Q1 2012 so you never know if they have any other plans in mind to fly the aircraft in the meantime. Till then folks who want to fly on the MH A380, let the bookings begin.
The second update is that Air France will replace the Boeing B777-200ER/-300ER on its daily Paris-Dubai flight with an Airbus A380, the change will be in effect from 5th December 2011 until the end of the Winter schedule i.e. 25th March 2012. This seems to be a great strategic move for luring customers from the Middle East markets to the Air France hub at Paris Charles DeGaulle Airport and undercut competition posed by the Middle East carriers specially Emirates. The schedule for the same would be as follows:
Paris Charles DeGaulle – Dubai
AF3830 CDG 1330 – 2300 DXB
AF3831 DXB 0145 – 0610 CDG