Airlines must ensure ticket sales to comply with SDMC’s latest approved schedules

KUCHING: All airlines must conduct all sales of flight tickets to be in accordance with the latest flight schedule approved by the State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC), which took effect yesterday.

In announcing this, Minister of Transport Datuk Lee Kim Shin said compliance by all airlines was crucial towards providing reliable air connectivity and flight services to the public in Sarawak.

In this respect, he also advised the public to refer to the SDMC’s latest approved flight schedules – available via the ministry’s website mot.sarawak.gov.my – prior to making any booking or purchase of tickets.

“Acting on the SDMC’s decision, my ministry had informed MAS, AirAsia, Malindo Air and MASwings on Jan 14 on the approved flights as indicated in the tables (provided by SDMC),” said the minister in a statement yesterday.

Lee said during its meeting held on Jan 14, SDMC made a decision to reduce the flight frequency to Sarawak, explaining that this was based on various reasons – namely the requests for flight reduction from the divisional disaster management committees, the limited number of hotel rooms available for quarantine, the sudden spike in positive Covid-19 cases in Sarawak, and the imposition of Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO) in Kuching and Miri – all declared as ‘Red Zones’ – in force until this Jan 26.

For Sibu, the district is under MCO until Jan 29.

“For overall flight-schedule planning, each airline is given different timing to facilitate its arrangements for passenger load per flight.

“This is also critical in assisting the airlines go through this challenging period,” said Lee, adding that the latest information regarding the flight schedules approved by SDMC had also been disseminated via social media.

“We trust that the public would be fully aware of the changes in flight schedules, so that they would better organise their travel plans during this Covid-19 period,” he said.