Malaysia Airlines and Garuda Indonesia reached an understanding to forge a smart partnership program to increase the opportunity for both carriers to jointly offer competitive and effective air cargo transportation between points in their networks.

As a first step in this partnership, Malaysia Airlines through its cargo division, MASkargo will partner Garuda Indonesia in capacity sharing, joint freighter service and special cargo pro-rate arrangement.

Arising from this understanding, MASkargo will introduce a once-weekly joint freighter service on the Jakarta/Kuala Lumpur sector effective 3 November 2001 using its B747-200 freighter aircraft, with convenient connections on Malaysia Airlines’ scheduled services beyond Kuala Lumpur.

Currently Malaysia Airlines provides a 42-tonne freighter capacity on its weekly Kuala Lumpur/Jakarta/Kuala Lumpur passenger services for Garuda Indonesia. This allocation will be increased when Malaysia Airlines doubles its services on that route from twice daily to four times daily effective January 2002.

The above arrangement also reinforces MASkargo’s efforts to promote Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) as the leading air-cargo transhipment hub in this region.

The next phase of the partnership will involve the following strategies:-
* Flight schedule co-ordination to enhance the synergy of Malaysia Airlines’ and Garuda Indonesia’s network and fleet

* Joint marketing
* Sharing information technology infrastructure

* Additional freighter services

* Resources sharing
Recently, MASkargo arranged a joint familiarization trip with Garuda Indonesia, for a group of 13 agents to understudy its facilities at Advanced Cargo Centre (ACC) in KLIA.
MASkargo is the airfreight handling division of Malaysia Airlines. Apart form its own international network using four B747-200 and one B747-400 freighter aircraft, its offers belly space capacity on scheduled Malaysia Airlines flights to more than 100 destinations in Malaysia and abroad.

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