KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 3 — Everything changed after the global pandemic.

More people were travelling than ever before and they were willing to spend. Families with kids were taking flights more often.

“All of this made us think, is it time for something else? How do you invoke that spirit of travel… that it is time for an adventure. And what are we selling… an experience, a brand of experience,” said Malaysia Aviation Group’s (MAG) Chief Commercial Officer of Airlines Dersenish Aresandiran in a recent interview.

(MAG is the parent company of national carrier Malaysia Airlines Berhad.)

And Malaysia Airlines’ ambitious “Time For” campaign is the result of careful analysis of that changing travel behaviour after the Covid-19 pandemic.

“This will also be our key initiative to support the national agenda for Visit Malaysia Year 2026,” Dersenish added.

The initiative spans the airline’s entire network, focusing on reshaping perceptions and elevating the brand throughout its transformation journey.

“If you look at Malaysia Airlines today, we are not just selling Malaysia Airlines now via our OneWorld membership.

“We started our partnership with MHcruise with cruise operators, we started a partnership with MHrails with railway operators. So in the UK, if you want to go to Manchester, you can get on a train now that has a partnership with us.

“So it is no longer the airline exclusively, but a seamless travel plan. The trends are changing, and we are agile and much faster in trying to push that forward as well,” Dersenish said, adding that MAG has travel partnerships in the UK, Korea and Japan and is looking to expand this in 2025 to include more service providers.

He added that cruise travel is particularly important in this area of expansion.

“We are also working very closely (with ports) to see how we can compliment cruise passengers with domestic flights as well. That is something new we are working on,” he said.

Dersenish explained that this plan is important for MAG to diversify travel and contribute to the country’s economy.

“Captain’s vision is very simple. He wants to drive economic growth. A passenger coming via cruise? We are ready to serve their domestic destinations,” he added, referring to MAG Group Managing Director Datuk Captain Izham Ismail.

He said that the “Time For” campaign would act as a strategic push for Malaysia Airlines’ significant network expansion, especially when it returns to European skies in March 2025.

This European expansion strategically aligns with the airline’s Australian operations as well.

“There is a strong connection between Europe and Australia. So as we expand in Europe, we also want to expand our network into Australia as well,” he added.

The past 15 months marked what Dersenish describes as a “commercial elevation,” driven by Izham’s vision of market dominance. Central to this transformation is a comprehensive fleet modernisation programme made up of the new generation wide-body aircrafts, A330neo.

“Our competition is not low-cost carriers. Our competition are the premium carriers because we aspire to be one of the top 10 global carriers by 2030,” Dersenish added, targeting the likes of Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Emirates, and Qatar Airways.

MAG is also revolutionising its approach to corporate travel by offering unprecedented flexibility and personalised service across all tiers of its business accounts.

“The most important thing for our corporate customers is flexibility. No matter what type of corporate account you have with us, be it the top tier or the lower tier we have an individual, a dedicated corporate account person on our end to take care of you,” Dersenish explained.

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