KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 13): Malaysia Airlines Bhd is offering passengers whose travel plans are affected by the reenforcement of Malaysia's Covid-19-driven Movement Control Order (MCO) and interstate travel ban the flexibility to rebook their airline tickets with a one-time fare difference and service-fee waiver.

In a statement on its website yesterday, Malaysia Airlines said the ticket-change flexibility is applicable only for travel within Malaysia from today to Jan 26, 2021.

"All rebooked/revised travel requests must be made on or before June 30, 2021 for travel to be completed by Dec 31, 2021. All subsequent changes for deferred/new travel dates will reflect the current available fare. The ticket change flexibility as above, however, does not apply to international tickets that include a domestic sector, for example London – Kuala Lumpur – Kuching routes.

"If you wish to cancel your flight, you can convert your ticket into a travel voucher/open ticket (applicable for all types of tickets except redemption tickets). This travel voucher/open ticket can be used for your next travel before/on Dec 31, 2021. 

"For those with redemption tickets, the options in the form of a full refund or a travel voucher is not applicable. Enrich members will be allowed to have their ticket open dated, with travel to be rebooked by June 30, 2021 and journey to be completed by Dec 31, 2021,” Malaysia Airlines said.

The government has reinstated the MCO in the states of Penang, Selangor, Melaka, Johor and Sabah as well as the federal territories of Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan for a two-week period starting today.

In a national address on Monday (Jan 11), Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said these states and federal territories are considered high-risk areas following a risk assessment as well as the evaluation of health services by the Ministry of Health (MoH).

In 2020, Malaysia's MCO, which was initially scheduled between March 18 and 31 nationwide, required non-essential businesses to stop operations, while the public was ordered to stay at home to curb the Covid-19 outbreak.

On March 25, Muhyiddin said the government decided to extend the MCO until April 14, because updates from the National Security Council and the MoH indicated an increase in Covid-19 cases. 

On April 10, Muhyiddin said the government was extending the MCO until April 28.

On April 23, Muhyiddin said the MCO would be extended for another two weeks until May 12.

On May 4, news reports, quoting Senior Minister (Security Cluster) Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob, indicated that regulations under phase four of the MCO were null and void with the commencement of the conditional movement control order (CMCO) or phase five of the MCO.