Malaysia Airlines announced (24-Nov-2022) plans to suspend Kuala Lumpur-Brisbane service from 27-Mar-2023 as part of a "route rationalisation exercise". The carrier added customers travelling to Brisbane can leverage on its codeshare and oneworld partner, Qantas Airways, and connect from Sydney and Melbourne to Brisbane after the suspension of the nonstop flight. Operations on nonstop flights between Kuala Lumpur to Adelaide, Sydney, Perth and Melbourne will continue without change, providing up to 43 nonstop services per week between Australia and Malaysia. Group CEO Izham Ismail stated: "After a thorough business review, we have made a difficult decision to suspend our operations into Brisbane to ensure we operate and utilise our fleet at an optimum level, as well as maximising revenue on every route we fly to". Mr Izham added forward booking to the other Australian cities is "very encouraging", with strong demand up to and beyond 1Q2023, with forward bookings "significantly" ahead of the same period in 2019. To date, the carrier has deployed capacities at 76% year-to-date, and anticipates ending 2022 with 82% capacity of pre-pandemic level networkwide. Excluding the suspension of Brisbane, Malaysia Airlines' Australia network will be at 98% capacity of pre-pandemic levels by Mar-2023. [more - original PR]