Kolkata, Oct 23 ( IANS) Betting big on the growing Indian tourist arrivals in Malaysia, Malindo Air on Tuesday inaugurated its flight operations from the city to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of the southeast Asian country.

On the Kolkata-Kuala Lumpur route, the airline will have flights five times a week offering a seat capacity of 810. It offers 12 business class and 150 economy class seats. This adds to 74 weekly flights by the airline from nine Indian cities including Trivandrum, Trichy, Kochin, Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, Amritsar, Delhi and Kolkata.

"India is one of the important markets for us and we have been getting good response. Kolkata is a potential market in terms of outbound travellers and we are looking for good response from here," the airline CEO Chandran Rama Muthy said.

The airline is experiencing a growing passenger load, its General Manager (Sales and Business Development) Ramdas Shivram said.

"We have two flights a week from Bengaluru, three flights a week from Trivandrum, three flights a day from Trichy, 11 flights a week from Delhi and Kochin each," he said.

Shivram said the flight came here with full load from Kuala Lumpur and on return, it has close to 100 passengers from Kolkata.

Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board's Director (North and East India) Sulaiman Suip said there was a 14.7 per cent growth in Indian tourist arrivals to over 3.07 lakh to the southeast Asian country during the January-June period of the current year, compared to over 2.68 lakh in the same period last year.

With the availability of more flights, Malaysia aspires to welcome one million Indian tourists by 2020.

--IANS

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