Firefly to resume flights to Subang at Seletar Airport

Malaysian low-cost carrier Firefly will resume flights between Singapore and Malaysia from Seletar Airport from June 13, after two years of Covid-19 pandemic-induced suspension.

"Singapore, we're back!" it said on its website yesterday. A one-way ticket between Singapore and Subang, which is near Kuala Lumpur, starts from RM119 (S$37), Firefly said.

It will operate two flights from Seletar Airport to Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport daily, down from six a day in 2019. Each flight on its ATR72-500 aircraft will be able to carry 72 passengers.

"With the opening of Malaysia's border... Firefly sees this as a perfect time to reinstate and play the role of connecting the communities within Singapore and Malaysia," Firefly chief executive Philip See said in a statement.

Changi Airport Group's managing director for air hub development Lim Ching Kiat said the Seletar passenger terminal, an $80 million facility opened in 2019, is ready to support Firefly's operations. The airport has not served passengers since the pandemic struck two years ago.

"We have seen strong travel demand between both countries since travel restrictions eased. We look forward to welcoming and serving passengers at the airport," Mr Lim said.

Whether the route will take off is a massive unknown. Even before the pandemic, Firefly had said it was struggling to fill seats.

The Singapore-Subang route, in particular, was one of the least popular, with typically only 40 per cent of seats occupied.

Its origin airport in Seletar, decided upon after talks with Changi Airport, was a huge disadvantage as it was thought by many to be still a military airport.

Firefly's Singapore-Subang operations had also been suspended for nearly five months in 2019 over an air disagreement between Singapore and Malaysia, causing it to lose customers.

Malaysia's civil aviation authority had objected to Singapore's plans to introduce Instrument Landing System procedures at Seletar Airport that would guide pilots' landing from a ground-based station, on the grounds that the procedures would affect the town of Pasir Gudang in Johor.

Singapore has since agreed to use a Global Positioning System-based instrument approach instead, using signals from a satellite to guide landing.

The return of the low-cost arm of Malaysia Aviation Group comes amid many other regional budget carriers, such as Scoot and Jetstar, gradually increasing their number of intra-regional flights in a bid to recapture their share of the once oversaturated market.

With virtually all borders in South-east Asia opened from last month, regional hubs like Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport, Changi Airport and Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport are fast regaining passenger traffic.

This month, the number of flights and seats that airlines planned to operate at multiple airports reached 40 per cent to 50 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.