Summary
- Batik Air Malaysia’s last New Zealand service ends on July 20.
- The last leg back to Kuala Lumpur will take 14h 20m with the Perth stopover.
- The Boeing 737 MAX 8-operated route lasted 11 months.
Depending on your tolerance, you may be sad or relieved that an exceptionally long Boeing 737-operated scheduled service ends on July 20. The one-stop operation covers 5,114 nautical miles (9,472 km) each way – longer than London Heathrow to Los Angeles – and has a block time of over 14 hours. Would you have fancied that? Oddly, I would have – but perhaps only once.
Despite its considerable duration, it isn’t the world’s longest same-plane, same-flight-number 737 service. Some Pacific multi-hop operations are longer and will be covered later.
Batik Air Malaysia to New Zealand
Previously called Malindo Air, Batik Air Malaysia took off from Kuala Lumpur to Perth and onward to Auckland in August 2023. The one-stop service had fifth-freedom traffic rights between the Australian and New Zealand cities. The operation was an extension of the carrier’s Kuala Lumpur-Perth operation, which operated for several years.
Image: GCMap
Despite being in existence for less than a year, the final flight – from Auckland back to Malaysia – is on July 20, two days from when this article was written. (The last departure from Kuala Lumpur is on July 19.) It is not a seasonal cut. In the long route’s final week, it operated thrice weekly, with all services on the 162-seat Boeing 737 MAX 8.
The final roundtrip schedule is as follows, with all times local. Including the ground time in Western Australia, it takes 14h 10m to reach Auckland and 14h 20m back. (In prior weeks, the return schedule was up to 14h 45m.) Even when broken into individual sectors, they are nowhere near long enough to feature in the top 10 narrowbody routes list.
- Kuala Lumpur to Perth: OD195, 10:35-16:10 (5h 35m)
- Perth to Auckland: OD195, 18:10-04:45+1 (6h 35m)
- Auckland to Perth: OD196, 06:30-10:10 (7h 40m)
- Perth to Kuala Lumpur: OD196, 11:10-16:50 (5h 40m)
Photo: Karolis Kavolelis | Shutterstock
What else for the airline?
Once Batik Air Malaysia’s New Zealand link has ceased, what will be the carrier’s next longest 737-operated service? (As you probably guessed, this article ignores Batik Air Indonesia.) Naturally, they are also one-stop links, with the direction of travel greatly influencing the results.
If the maximum block time is considered, Brisbane will take the crown via Denpasar Bali (Australia’s Malaga) back to Kuala Lumpur. It is up to 11h 40m (with headwinds), influenced by a two-hour stop in Indonesia. (Flightradar24 shows that the A330-300 is deployed at times.) The stopover is sometimes reduced, cutting the elapsed time to 10h 40m – tied with Sydney via Denpasar to Malaysia’s capital.
Photo: Boeing
Other notable long services are Melbourne via Denpasar to Kuala Lumpur (10h 35m), Osaka Kansai via Taipei to Kuala Lumpur (9h 20m), and Kuala Lumpur-Kaohsiung-Nagoya (9h 20m). What about non-stop flights? Two are tied at 7h 30m: Dubai and Tokyo Narita back to Malaysia’s capital. Notice that each is 10 minutes shorter than Auckland-Perth. So long!