News
26 October 2009
MASwings Celebrates 2nd Anniversary
Kota Kinabalu: In recognition of the employees’ achievement and contribution, MASwings gave away nine outstanding recognition awards to the deserving recipients in conjunction with its 2nd Anniversary celebration.
The recognition is awarded to station that record best on-time performance, lowest mishandled baggage, highest revenue, highest growth and highest excess baggage collection while for individual category recognition is given to staff that displayed dedication and exemplary conduct.
The awards were presented by the Managing Director MASwings, Mohd Salleh Ahmad Tabrani and Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment Sabah, Datuk Masidi Manjun at the 2nd Anniversary dinner attended by more than 300 Malaysia Airlines and MASwings staff.
In his welcoming address, Mohd Salleh said “I wish to record my appreciation to all my MASwings staff for the job well done and also to the rest of other Malaysia Airlines staff for their assistance and cooperation to push MASwings to greater heights”.
He added, “The cooperation between all staff under Malaysia Airlines Group is crucial to ensure the group to achieve higher results”.
Datuk Masidi said, “I applaud your effort in recognising your staff as such recognisation would encourage them to perform even better.” I would also like to congratulate MASwings and the management team and hope MASwings will continue to play its role to support the development of economic and tourism of both Sabah and Sarawak”.
MASwings was incorporated on 1 October 2007 as Malaysia Airlines subsidiary to handle rural air service operations in an exclusive basis. We stated with skeleton staff and to date, the staff strengths are 1300 in total across Sabah and Sarawak. During the route rationalisation exercise, all Malaysia Airlines staff in Sabah and Sarawak with the exception of sales department, MAS Engineering and MASkargo, was absorb under MASwings.
We have expanded our wings and introduced new route such as Tanjung Manis and we increased our frequencies to destination like Ba’kelalan, Tawau, Sandakan, Sibu and Miri.
We have achieved a strong passenger growth of 24% and the average numbers of passengers increased from 62,000 to 70,000 a month. Our average flight frequencies increased from 600 to 900 passengers per week.
MASwings has also uplifted its one-millionth passenger in February this year, just within 17 months of our operations. We have also undergone fleet renewal program where we introduced the ATR72-500 in September last year. Currently, we are operating with 6 ATR and will be receiving the 7th ATR in December this year. By April 2010, MASwings will operate with all 10 ATR fleet which will replace the old aging Fokker 50 aircrafts.
Earlier this afternoon, MASwings also celebrated the graduation of the second batch of its cabin staff. The Managing Director of MASwings, Mohd Salleh Ahmad Tabrani handed out the certificates to the graduates and wished them the best in their line of duty.
MASwings commenced its operations on October 1 2007, offers 700 weekly flights, which serves a network of 22 destinations in Sarawak and Sabah as well as the Federal Territory of Labuan. It currently has a fleet of 5 Fokker 50, 4 Twin Otter aircraft and 6 ATR72.