AirAsia X today launched five times weekly direct flights between Abu Dhabi in the UAE and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.  To celebrate, the low cost long-haul airline is offering what it calls “Free Seats” on the route to customers who book their flights and hotels via GoHoliday – AirAsia’s holiday division – for selected hotels in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi. The “Go Holiday Free Flight” promotion is available for booking between 24 and 27 November 2009, for travel between 1 December 2009 and 31 January 2010. Terms and conditions apply.

H.E. Dato’ Yahaya Abdul Jabar, Ambassador of Malaysia to the UAE said, “Today’s launch signifies an important milestone in the field of aviation and tourism to Malaysia as well as the UAE. The launch of 5 times weekly flights to Abu Dhabi from Kuala Lumpur will be mutually beneficial to both Malaysia and Abu Dhabi tourism, as we can expect a considerable increase in both inbound and outbound travel to both destinations, which bodes well for the economy for both Malaysia and the Middle East. Malaysia looks forward to increase business, commercial, and investment ties with the new connection between the two countries. We see an increase in Malaysian companies’ business interest investing in Abu Dhabi. We anticipate their investments in areas of property development, tourism, agro-based industries, biotechnology, food processing and oil and gas.”

Abu Dhabi is AirAsia X’s first destination in the Middle East. Flights depart Kuala Lumpur (days 1,4,5,6 and 7) at 22:00 to arrive in Abu Dhabi at 01:30. The return leg from Abu Dhabi departs (days 1,2,5,6 and 7) at 02:55 to arrive in Kuala Lumpur at 13:55.

Mr. Ahmed Hussein, Deputy Director General, Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority said, “Today, AirAsia X is really bringing an X factor to Abu Dhabi – X for Exceptional air links that AirAsia is now providing this destination to better penetrate the Xtremely important Asian market. There is much here to engage the Asian traveller – and indeed the authority is so convinced of the market that it is now running specialist training courses for our industry stakeholders on how to specifically serve this segment of the market which has its own individual needs.”

“With a flying time of only around seven hours to Singapore and Malaysia – the market has much to offer us. AirAsia’s network to the vast market Chinese market will also increase Abu Dhabi’s access to the People’s Republic which we regard of such great potential that the authority now has three offices operating there,” Mr. Hussein added.