KUALA LUMPUR (March 28): The government has no plans to open rural air services (RAS) for Sabah and Sarawak to other airlines apart from MASwings Sdn Bhd at this juncture, said Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Abdul Aziz Kaprawi.
“At this juncture, the government does not have any plan to appoint other operators other than MASwings to run RAS in the two states,” he said during his address to justify additional allocation required under the Supplementary Supply (2016) Bill 2017 for the Transport Ministry in Parliament today.
Abdul Aziz also told Dewan Rakyat that the government, via the Malaysian Aviation Commission (Mavcom), is in the midst of reviewing RAS and MASwings’ air transport service, which includes whether to allow the Sarawak state government to take over the carrier eventually.
“The study will review all the services holistically that include RAS’ objectives, air fare rates, aircraft usage by MASwings and mechanism for subsidy to consumer. Please wait for Mavcom to complete its review before we get any further details. We estimate that the study will be done by the end of this year,” he added.
Abdul Aziz was responding to a question by Member of Parliament for Bandar Kuching Chong Chieng Jen, who sought further details on the RAS following The Edge weekly's latest report that MASwings will continue to run the service for another seven years. The current contract is scheduled to end in September this year.
RAS enables scheduled commercial flights to be provided to rural areas in the two states. The service is currently solely operated by MASwings, under contract with the federal government.
Abdul Aziz said last year, the government spent RM216.72 million in subsidy to MASwings to run RAS, and the Transport Ministry is seeking an additional allocation of RM62.72 million under the Supplementary Supply (2016) Bill 2017.
The additional requirement, according to him, was due to MASwings’ new aircraft leases.
“For aircraft leasing cost, an ATR72-500 requires US$170,000 per month, while a Twin Otter [Viking DHC6-400s] costs US$59,000 per month,” he said.